[406] {347} [Compare Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22-- "They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead."] [407] {348} ["Friuli's mountains" are the Julian Alps, which lie to the north of Trieste and north-east of Venice, "the hoar and aëry Alps towards the north," which Julian and Count Maddalo (_vide post_, p. 349) saw from the Lido. But the Alpine height along which "a sea of glory" streamed--"the peak of the far Rhætian hill" (stanza xxviii. line 4)--must lie to the westward of Venice, in the track of the setting sun.] [408] The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira. [Compare Shelley's _Julian and Maddalo_ (_Poetical Works_, 1895, i. 343)-- "How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! * * * * * ... We stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar And aëry Alps towards the north appeared, Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue, Brighter than burning gold."] [409] {349} [The Brenta rises in Tyrol, and flowing past Padua falls into the Lagoon at Fusina. Mira, or La Mira, where Byron "colonized" in the summer of 1817, and again in 1819, is on the Brenta, some six or seven miles inland from the Lagoon.]