Evening was fast approaching; and after entering a narrow wooded valley between two lofty hills, I found the gloom increasing rapidly. The clouds, too, were gathering fast; a few large drops of rain plashed heavily on the tossing leaves; while a faint gleam of lightning, and the muttering of distant thunder announced an approaching storm. I now looked somewhat anxiously for the dwelling of the recluse; and pursuing the windings of that ancient way—which, perhaps, in former days had echoed to the sandalled feet of Milo’s mighty host—I penetrated yet further into the deep valley. Stupendous oaks clothed the darkening hills, and cast a sable and melancholy gloom around. The solitude was awful; the stillness intense: for it was scarcely broken by a brawling torrent, rushing, red and muddy, over a precipice of jagged rock, and resounding in a deep and echoing chasm. Afar off, on the most distant peaks, flickered the blaze of vast furnaces kindled by charcoal burners; but soon these fires were quenched by the fury of the rising storm, and broad sheets of lightning, with vivid and ghastly glare lit earth and sky almost incessantly. By the livid flashes I was enabled to find my way to the hermitage, and pushing forward at full gallop I gladly reached its welcome shelter. A rough wooden cross, and a turf-seat beside a rock, from which bubbled a rill into a basin worn by the water (that had fallen for ages, perhaps) on the stones below, answered the description given me of the abode of this recluse of the wilderness. Dismounting, I approached a small edifice of stone, which appeared to be the ruined tomb of some ancient Roman; whose name once great and glorious, was now lost in oblivion. Its form was square, its size about twelve feet each way, and it had a domed roof of massive stone-work, which was covered with ivy and myrtle, while wild fuchsias and wall-flowers flourished in the clefts and joints of the decayed masonry. Two Roman columns and an entablature, time-worn and mutilated, formed the portico, which was closed by a rustic door of rough-barked wood. On the architrave I could just make out this inscription, cut in ancient characters, SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS; the wish uttered at the funerals of the Latins, that earth might press lightly on the person buried. I, therefore, concluded that the edifice had been erected anterior to the custom of burning the dead. Fastening my horse in a sheltered nook, between the tomb and a rock that rose perpendicularly behind it, I knocked thrice at the door; but not receiving an answer, I pushed it open and entered. The light of a lamp, placed in a recess before an image of the Madonna, glimmered like a star amid the darkness of that dreary habitation, and just enabled me to perceive, on my eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, a most melancholy object; one not unlike that which presented itself to the reprobate Don Raphael and his friend among the mountains of Cuença.