We hauled up to windward of Procida, sailing through an element so limpid that we saw every rush and stone on the bottom in five fathom water. Having opened the channel between the two islands, we bore up for the town of Ischia, where we arrived a little before sunset. Here a scene presented itself which more resembled a fairy picture than one of the realities of this every-day world of ours. I think it was the most ravishing thing, in its way, eye of mine ever looked upon. We had the black volcanic peaks of the island for a background, with the ravine-like valleys and mountain-faces, covered with country-houses and groves, in front. The town is near the southern extremity of the land, and lies along the shore for more than a mile on a bit of level formation; but, after passing a sort or bridge or terrace, which I took to be a public promenade, the rocks rose suddenly, and terminated in two or three lofty, fantastic, broken fragment-like crags, which make the south-eastern end of the island. On these rocks were perched some old castles, so beautifully wild and picturesque, that they seemed placed there for no other purpose than to adorn the landscape. By a curvature of the land, these rocks sheltered the roadstead, and the quaint old structures were brought almost to impend over our heads. The whole population seemed to be out enjoying themselves after the heat of the day, and a scene in which a movement of life was so mingled with a superb but lovely nature, it is indeed rare to witness. Until that moment I was not fully sensible of the vast superiority of the Italian landscapes over all others. Switzerland astonishes, and it even often delights, by its union of the pastoral with the sublime; but Italian nature wins upon you until you come to love it like a friend. I can only liken the perfection of the scene we gazed upon this evening to a feeling almost allied to transport; to the manner in which we dwell upon the serene expression of a beloved and lovely countenance. Other scenes have the tints, the hues, the outlines, the proportions, the grandeur, and even the softness of beauty; but these have the character that marks the existence of a soul. The effect is to pour a flood of sensations on the mind, that are as distinct from the commoner feelings of wonder that are excited by vastness and magnificence, as the ideas awakened by an exquisite landscape by Claude are different from those we entertain in looking at a Salvator Rosa. The _refinement_ of Italian nature appears to distinguish it as much from that of other countries, as the same quality distinguishes the man of sentiment and intellect from the man of mere impulses. In sublimity of a certain sort, more especially in the sublimity of desolation, Switzerland probably has no equal on earth; and perhaps to this is to be added a certain unearthly aspect which the upper glaciers assume in particular conditions of the atmosphere; but these Italian scenes rise to a sublimity of a different