the selfishness of
despondency, and my quick spirit of enjoyment utterly subdued into
apathy, gave me for a moment a pang sharper than if a keen knife had
cut me to the quick; and then I relapsed into a kind of torpid languor
of mind and frame, which I thought was resignation, and as such
indulged it.

From my bed this morning I stepped out upon my balcony just as the sun
was rising. I wished to convince myself whether the beauty on which I
had lately looked with such admiration and delight, had indeed lost
all power to touch my heart. The impression made upon my mind at that
instant I can only compare to the rolling away of a palpable and
suffocating cloud: every thing on which I looked had the freshness and
brightness of novelty: a glory beyond its own was again diffused over
the enchanting scene from the stores of my own imagination: the sea
breeze which blew against my temples new-strung every nerve; and I
left Mola with a heart so lightened and so grateful, that not for
hours afterwards, not till fatigue and hurry had again wearied down my
spirits, did that impression of happy thankfulness pass away.

I am sensible I owed this sudden renovation of health solely to the
contemplation of Nature; and a true feeling for all the "maggior
pompa" she has poured forth over this glorious region. The shores of
Terracina, the azure sea, dancing in the breeze, the waves rolling to
our feet, the sublime cliffs, the fleet of forty sail stretching away
till lost in the blaze of the horizon, the Circean promontory, even
the picturesque fisherman, whom we saw throwing his nets from an
insulated rock at some distance from the shore, and whom a very
trifling exertion of fancy might have converted into some sea
divinity, a Glaucus, or a Proteus, formed altogether a picture of the
most wonderful and luxuriant beauty. In England there is a peculiar
charm in the soft aerial perspective, which even in the broadest glare
of noonday, blends and masses the forms of the distant landscape; and
in that mingling of colours into a cool neutral gray tint so grateful
to the eye. Hence it has happened that in some of the Italian pictures
I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to
me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline,
o'erstepping the modesty of nature--that is, of _English nature_: but
there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious
all-embracing light, a vivid distinctnes