‘When I had sat for some time,’ says Beckford,[34] ‘on a loose stone immediately beneath the first gloomy arch of the grotto, contemplating the dusky avenue, and trying to persuade myself that it was hewn by the Cimmerians, I retreated, without proceeding any further, and followed a narrow path which led me, after some windings and turnings, along the brink of the precipice, across a vineyard, to that retired nook of the rocks which shelters Virgil’s tomb, most venerably mossed over and more than half concealed by bushes and vegetation. The clown who conducted me remained aloof at awful distance whilst I sat communing with the manes of my beloved poet, or straggled about the shrubbery which hangs directly above the mouth of the grot. Footnote 34: ‘Italy.’ ‘Advancing to the edge of the rock, I saw crowds of people and carriages, diminished by distance, issuing from the bosom of the mountain, and disappearing almost as soon as discovered in the windings of the road. Clambering high above the cavern, I hazarded my neck on the top of one of the pines, and looked contemptuously down on the race of pigmies that were so busily moving to and fro. The sun was fiercer than I could have wished, but the sea breezes fanned me in my aërial situation, which commanded the grand sweep of the bay, varied by convents, palaces, and gardens, mixed with huge masses of rock, and crowned by the stately buildings of the Carthusians and fortress of St. Elmo. Add a glittering blue sea to this perspective, with Caprea rising from its bosom, and Vesuvius breathing forth a white column of smoke into the æther, and you will then have a scene upon which I gazed with delight for more than an hour, forgetting that I was perched upon the head of a pine with nothing but a frail branch to uphold me. However, I descended alive, as Virgil’s genii, I am resolved to believe, were my protectors.’ CHAPTER XXIII. ON MINES IN GENERAL.