modern tourist who visits this enchanted region; and such a
vision is indeed worthy to be the last imprinted upon a human retina.
It is called by the Italians themselves "Un pezzo di cielo caduto in
terra," a piece of heaven fallen upon earth. Shores that curve in
every line of beauty, holding out arm-like promontories, into whose
embrace the tideless sea runs up; mountain-ranges whose tops in
winter are covered with snow, and whose sides are draped with the
luxuriant vegetation of the South; a large city rising in a series of
semicircular terraces from the deep azure of the sea to the deep azure
of the mountains, whose eastern architecture flushes to a vivid rosy
hue in the afternoon light like some fabled city of the poets; and
dominating the glorious horizon the double peak of Vesuvius forming
the centre in which all the features of landscape loveliness are
focussed--crowned by its pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.
Such is the picture upon which travellers crowd from the ends of the
earth to gaze.

Nor was the view different in its most important elements in the days
of the apostle. The same great forms of the landscape met the eye; and
the same magic play of light and colour, the same jewel-points
flashing in the waters, the same gleams of purple and crimson
wandering over town, and vineyard, and wood, transfigured the scene
then, which gives it more than half its loveliness now. But its human
elements were different. Swarming with life as are these shores at the
present day, they were even more populous then. Where we now wander
through picturesque ruins and silent solitudes, prosperous towns and
villages stood; and temples, palaces, and summer houses of patrician
magnificence crowded upon each other to such an extent that the sea
itself was invaded, and an older Venice rose from the waters along the
curves of its bays. The shores of Baiae were the very centre of Roman
splendour. The emperor and his court spent a large part of the year
there; and noble families, that elsewhere had domains miles in extent,
were there satisfied with the smallest space upon which they could
build a house and plant a garden. Pompeii and Herculaneum, in all
their reckless gaiety, lay, unconscious of danger, at the foot of
Vesuvius, then a grassy mountain wooded to the summit with oak and
chestnut, and known from time immemorial as a field of pasture for
flocks and herds. The Bay of Misenum, now so solitary that the scream
o