Whilst I was advancing with full speed, the sunbeams began to shoot athwart the mountains, the plains to light up by degrees, and their shrubberies of myrtle to glisten with dewdrops. The sea brightened, and the Circean rock soon glowed with purple. I never felt my spirits so exhilarated, and they could not have flowed with more vivacity, even had I tasted the cup which Helen gave Telemachus. You will think me gone wild when I tell you I was, in a manner, drunk with the dews of the morning, and so enraptured with the prospects which lay before me as to address them in verse, and compose charms to dispel the enchantments of Circe. All day were we approaching her rock; towards evening Terracina appeared before us, in a bold romantic site; house above house, and turret looking over turret, on the steeps of a mountain, inclosed with mouldering walls, and crowned by the ruined terraces of a delightful palace: one of those, perhaps, which the luxurious Romans inhabited during the summer, when so free and lofty an exposition (the sea below, with its gales and murmurs) must have been exquisitely agreeable. Groves of orange and citron hang on the declivity, rough with the Indian fig, whose bright red flowers, illuminated by the sun, had a magic splendour. A palm-tree, growing on the highest crag, adds not a little to its singular appearance. Being the largest I had ever seen, and clustered with fruit, I climbed up the rocks to take a close survey of it, and found a spring trickling near its fount, bordered by fresh herbage. On this I stretched myself on the very edge of the precipice, and looking down upon the beach, and glassy plains of ocean, exclaimed with Martial: “O nemua! O fentes! solidumque madentis arenæ Littus, et æquoreis splendidus Anxur aquis!” Glancing my eyes athwart the sea, I fixed them on the Circean promontory, which lies right opposite to Terracina, joined to the continent by a very narrow strip of land, and appearing like an island. The roar of the waves lashing the base of the precipices, might still be thought the howl of savage monsters; but where are those woods which shaded the dome of the goddess? Scarce a tree appears. A few thickets, and but a few, are the sole remains of this once impenetrable vegetation; yet even these I longed to visit, such was my predilection for the spot.