“That your Manhattan and Raritan waters are broad and pleasant, none can deny, and that lovely beings dwell on their banks, lady,” returned Seadrift, gallantly lifting his cap, “my own senses have witnessed. But ’twere wiser to select some other point of your excellence, for comparison, than a competition with the glorious waters, the fantastic and mountain isles, and the sunny hill-sides of modern Napoli! ’Tis certain the latitude is even in your favor, and that a beneficent sun does not fail of its office in one region more than in the other. But the forests of America are still too pregnant of vapors and exhalations, not to impair the purity of the native air. If I have seen much of the Mediterranean, neither am I a stranger to these coasts. While there are so many points of resemblance in their climates, there are also many and marked causes of difference.” “Teach us, then, what forms these distinctions, that, in speaking of our bay and skies, we may not be led into error.” “You do me honor, lady; I am of no great schooling, and of humble powers of speech. Still, the little that observation may have taught me, shall not be churlishly withheld. Your Italian atmosphere, taking the humidity of the seas, is sometimes hazy. Still water in large bodies, other than in the two seas, is little known in those distant countries. Few objects in nature are drier than an Italian river, during those months when the sun has most influence. The effect is visible in the air, which is in general elastic, dry, and obedient to the general laws of the climate. There floats less exhalation, in the form of fine and nearly invisible vapor, than in these wooded regions. At least, so he of whom I spoke, as one who guided my youth, was wont to say.” “You hesitate to tell us of our skies, our evening light, and of our bay?” “It shall be said, and said sincerely—Of the bays, each seems to have been appropriated to that for which nature most intended it.—The one is poetic, indolent, and full of graceful but glorious beauty; more pregnant of enjoyment than of usefulness. The other will, one day, be the mart of the world!” “You still shrink from pronouncing on their beauty;” said Alida, disappointed, in spite of an affected indifference to the subject.