"O Lady Fortune, with the flattering smile On thy deceitful face, why hast thou raised One so contented with his humble lot To height so giddy? Wheresoe'er I look, Terrors around me threaten, and at last The deeper fall is sure. Ah, happier far-- Safe from the ills of envy once I hid-- Among the rocks of sea-girt Corsica. I was my own; my soul was free from care, In studious leisure lightly sped the hours. Oh, it was joy,--for in the mighty round Of Nature's works is nothing more divine,-- To look upon the heavens, the sacred sun, With all the motions of the universe, The seasonable change of morn and eve, The orb of Phœbe and the attendant stars, Filling the night with splendour far and wide. All this, when it grows old, shall rush again Back to blind chaos; yea, even now the day, The last dread day is near, and the world's wreck Shall crush this impious race." A rude sheep-track led us up the mountain over shattered rocks. Half-way up to the tower, completely hidden among crags and bushes, lies a forsaken Franciscan cloister. The shepherds and the wild fig-tree now dwell in its halls, and the raven croaks the _de profundis_. But the morning and the evening still come there to hold their silent devotions, and kindle incense of myrtle, mint, and cytisus. What a fragrant breath of herbs is about us! what morning stillness on the mountains and the sea! We stood on the Tower of Seneca. We had clambered on hands and feet to reach its walls. By holding fast to projecting ledges and hanging perilously over the abyss, you can gain a window. There is no other entrance into the tower; its outer works are destroyed, but the remains show that a castle, either of the seigniors of Cape Corso or of the Genoese, stood here. The tower is built of astonishingly firm material; its battlements, however, are rent and dilapidated. It is unlikely that Seneca lived on this Aornos, this height forsaken by the very birds, and certainly too lofty a flight for moral philosophers--a race that love the levels. Seneca probably lived in one of the Roman colonies, Aleria or Mariana, where the stoic, accustomed to the conveniences of Roman city life, may have established himself comfortably in some house near the sea; so that the favourite mullet and tunny had not far to travel from the strand to his table.