th our fellow-mortals on pleasure bent
close at hand, we find it difficult to forget the present. Would it be
possible, we ask ourselves, to spend a nocturnal vigil within the hall of
the great temple of the Sea God, so as to behold, like that undaunted
traveller, Crawford Ramage, the shafts of crystalline moonlight shed
through the aperture of the roof leap from pillar to pillar, making bars
of brilliant light amidst the surrounding blackness! O to sit and meditate
thus engrossed with the memory of the past, and with no other sounds
around us than the sad cry of the _aziola_, the little downy owl that
Shelley so loved! But the gaunt spectre of Fever ever haunts this spot,
and after sunset his power is supreme; so that he would be a bold man
indeed who in an age of luxury and selfish comfort would carry out an idea
at once so romantic and so perilous.

We ourselves were especially fortunate on the occasion of our last visit
to Poseidonia on a mild day in December, a month which on the Lucanian
shore somewhat resembles a northern October. A soft luminous haze hung
over the landscape and over the Bay of Salerno itself, rendering the
classic mountains at once indistinct in outline and unnaturally lofty to
the eye. More grandiose and mysterious than under the fierce light of a
sunny noontide appeared that day the three giant pillared forms, as we
entered the precincts of the ruined city by the Siren's Gate, and made our
way through the thick herbage still pearled with dew, since there was
neither sunshine nor sirocco to dry "the tears of mournful Eve" off the
clumps of silver-glinted acanthus, or the tall grasses bending with the
moisture. In the warm humid air we seated ourselves on the plinth of a
column, and gazing around allowed the influence of this marvellous spot to
sink deep into the soul. No tourists with unseemly or unnecessary chatter
arrived that day to share our selfish delight or to break the
all-pervading spell of solitude; all lay peaceful and deserted. All was
silent too save for the low monotonous sobbing of the sea on the unseen
beach near at hand, the historic beach on which at various times
throughout the roll of past ages Doric colonists, Epirot warriors, Roman
legionaries and fierce Mohammedan pirates had disembarked, all with the
same object:--to seize the proud city that had now for the last thousand
years lain uninhabited, save for the owls and the bats. It was too cloudy
a day for sun-loving creatu