If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had Tasso born at the Villa Nardi, where I like best to stay, and where I find traces of many pilgrims from other countries. Here, in a little corner room on the terrace, Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, every morning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, Agnes of Sorrento will come down the sweet-scented path with a basket of oranges on her head. SEA AND SHORE It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere, to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems. practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The contours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as graceful as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty. The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for all these Mediterranean shores. The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing bow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, a precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove, where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas, hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns, natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy mansion in this rocky front with a spade.