We have been on all the heights in this manner. One of our visits was to a ruined convent, a _Camaldoli_, on the mountain that separates the _piano_ of Sorrento from that of Vico. These _Camaldoli_ are always placed on heights; St. Bruno, the founder of the order, being directed by a dream, or a vision, I believe, to adopt the plan. The effect is poetical and good; for I cannot imagine a finer stimulant for religious meditation, than a broad view of the glories of the earth; and this the more especially, if it be chastened by a knowledge of the things practised on it. One gets, in this way, an idea of what things might be without sin, to contrast with one’s knowledge of what things are. In boyhood, my feeling on such places, was ever to fly, in order to cull the beauties by again approaching them; but, as life glides away, I find the desire to recede increase, as if I would reduce the whole earth to a picture in a camera obscura, in which the outlines and general beauties are embraced, while the disgusting details are diminished to atoms. The view from the eminence north of the _piano_, like every other view in this region, is magnificent; but one cannot go amiss, in this respect, in a country in which rocks, plains, water, mountains, and life, are blended in the affluence that distinguishes Naples. The convent buildings are chiefly destroyed, for there has been a great suppression of monastic orders in this country; but the chapel still stands. It is used as a barn, and was half full of hay. Still the altar-piece, a very good picture, remains! There is a seat on the verge of the cliff, that overlooks the plain of Sorrento, as one would overlook a garden from the Belvedere of a house, or a ship’s decks from her mizen top. Here we were particularly struck with the resemblance of the houses to those of Pompeii, all the roofs being low, with the species of dome-like curvature, to turn the water, that has been before mentioned. An excursion in the opposite direction proved to be still finer. We went up the heights, behind Sorrento, by a Swissish road, half stairs, half path, until we gained a country that had a more pastoral character than usual. A hamlet on the summit, that overlooked the Mediterranean towards the south, and at an elevation of near, if not quite, a thousand feet, is called St. Agata. Some small rocky islets, at no great distance from the coast, and around which the sleeping billows, in their incessant rolling, just raised a circle of white, are called the Islands of the Syrens; it being assumed that these are the Islands where Ulysses encountered those sea ladies; and one of them is said to contain the ruins of a temple. They are mere rocks, not larger than that on which we landed near Piombino. Can these ruins once have been the abode of nymphs, who seduced the wanderer from his path, on anchoring accidentally near them?