We took a light breakfast, and left the shores of Ischia just as the sun rose. The island is volcanic, and blocks of lava looking as fresh as that at the foot of Vesuvius, lie along the margin of the sea; and yet no tradition, or history, speaks of the volcano as active! These visible proofs of the imperfection of our records, and of the course of time, have a tendency to create new views of things. I am glad to hear that theologians and philosophers are beginning to see the possibility of reconciling the text of sacred history with the evidences of science, and to be of a mind in believing this world vastly older than the vulgar understanding of the Mosaic account has, hitherto, led us to think. You are not to infer, however, that I believe the lava of Ischia so very ancient; the five thousand years will very well suffice for all the geological phenomena that I am acquainted with, and which lie on the surface of the earth. The morning was calm, and we pulled towards the western point of Procida. This is one of the few islands of this region that is without any mountain. It is extremely populous, though quite small, having a good deal of shipping. We landed on the point, and, by way of exploring the island, walked to the town. It is the fashion to see a Greek character in this people, who were originally a Greek colony (as indeed were those on the adjacent main); but we saw no more than the same swarthy, dark-eyed race that throngs the streets of Naples. Re-embarking at the port, we pulled towards the promontory of Mysenum, and landed behind the bluff, directing our galley to proceed and meet us near Baiæ. Nearly every foot of the shore, for several miles, was now historical, offering, amid a fatiguing sameness, and a sterility of surface, some relic of antiquity. An ordinary traveller, in passing along this place, would see as little to please him, or to attract his attention, as in any part of Italy I know; and yet Pompeii itself is scarcely more pregnant with recollections. The Elysian Fields of Virgil are now a tangled brake; the _Mare Morto_ is dead enough, and is scarcely worthy to be called a pool. Some imagine that the first was a place of interment for the wealthy, converted by the imagination of the poet into an arena of souls; and that the _sea_ was merely an inner basin of the port of Mysenum, transformed by the same subtle process into the Styx. It is more probable that the imaginations of other people converted the Elysian Fields of the poet into this, and the inner basin, if inner basin it ever was, into his Styx. It struck me that the popular notions about this place are altogether too sublimated for a true poet, and that the popular genius, instead of that of Virgil, has been at work here.