ving vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in
a chaos between sea and sky. Sometimes the fog broke and showed us
Villafranca, lying green and flat in the deep blue below: sometimes a
distant view of higher peaks swam into sight from the shifting cloud.
But the whole scene was desolate. Was it for this that we had left our
English home, and travelled from London day and night? At length we
reached the edge of the cloud, and jingled down by Roccabruna and the
olive-groves, till one by one Mentone's villas came in sight, and at
last we found ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next day
and the next night, we heard the hoarse sea beat and thunder on the
beach. The rain and wind kept driving from the south, but we consoled
ourselves with thinking that the orange-trees and every kind of flower
were drinking in the moisture and waiting to rejoice in sunlight which
would come.

It was a Sunday morning when we woke and found that the rain had gone,
the sun was shining brightly on the sea, and a clear north wind was
blowing cloud and mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not caring
much what path we took; for everything was beautiful, and hill
and vale were full of garden walks. Through lemon-groves,--pale,
golden-tender trees,--and olives, stretching their grey boughs against
the lonely cottage tiles, we climbed, until we reached the pines and
heath above. Then I knew the meaning of Theocritus for the first time.
We found a well, broad, deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at
the bottom, a runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, maidenhair,
black adiantum, and blue violets, hanging from the brink and mirrored
in the water. This was just the well in _Hylas_. Theocritus
has been badly treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature,
artificial in his pictures. Yet I recognised this fountain by his
verse, just as if he had showed me the very spot. Violets grow
everywhere, of every shade, from black to lilac. Their stalks are
long, and the flowers 'nod' upon them, so that I see how the Greeks
could make them into chaplets--how Lycidas wore his crown of white
violets[5] lying by the fireside elbow-deep in withered asphodel,
watching the chestnuts in the embers, and softly drinking deep healths
to Ageanax far off upon the waves. It is impossible to go wrong in
these valleys. They are cultivated to the height of about five hundred
feet above the sea, in terraces laboriously built up with walls,
e