"Enjoy the moment! Thus preaches Hesperia, and he who wreathes himself with its wildly growing myrtles does not remember the myrtle of German hot-houses, with which the bride adorns herself for life. I know Florence, that city of flowers, Rome the city of ruins; noisy Naples, where the tide of men, and the beating of the ocean's waves blend their roar, and whose single cyclopean eye is fire-belching Vesuvius. Yet nowhere did I feel so much at home as on the upper Italian lakes; and in spite of all the charms of Lago di Como, that splendid divided radiant mirror, which is most beautiful at that point whence one can overlook both its separate arms of water which twine themselves around the villa-clad heights; despite the loveliness of Lago di Garda, and its northerly port, above all others I have enshrined Lago Maggiore in my heart and spent two years of my life upon its shores. I know all the Swiss and Italian towns on its borders; but I lingered most fondly in Stresa, because from it a quick passage by boat bore me to the jewels of the lake, the Boromean islands. "It was one beautiful summer's evening that I stood upon the topmost terrace of the Isola Bella; the lake glistened in the evening's crimson splendour; varied lights danced in the winding cypress walks, in the concealed shell-grottoes, and played upon the statues and obelisks of the uppermost terrace. The sister isles, the towns on the shores, the vine-surrounded villa-clad hills lay on the opposite side in a softer sheen. Sasso Ferrato, with its rocky walls, rose up defiantly in the lake; as if bathed in a red-hot glow, stood the ice-armour of the snowy peaks which guard the Alpine passes, which here lead down to the lake of Geneva, yonder to that of the four Cantons. Picturesquely the fiery red of the sinking sun contrasted with the glorious green of the Lago. "How often people have blamed the _baroque_ taste, the green _roccoco_ of this Isola Bella! And yet, why should one not place a jewel in a brilliant artistic setting? This Isola Bella is the most beautiful belvidere on the lake; why should that belvidere not be splendidly decorated? The art which is lavished upon that small spot of earth does not detract from that vast nature which encloses it with her gigantic Alps! And then there is something soothing in these hiding places amongst the trees, these shell-grottoes--they invite one to quiet talk, to silent happiness; and how full is the heart, when the magic of this glorious nature, these evening lights, those perfumes flowing from a hundred flower calex--the whole of that fervidly-breathing life has inspired us!