[1] De Quincey, in his essay on _The Caesars_, has worked
out this subject with such artistic vividness that no more
need be said. From his pages I have quoted the
paraphrastic version of Suetonius that follows.

But it is time to shake off the burden of the past. Only students,
carrying superfluity of culture in their knapsacks, will ponder over the
imperial lunatics who made Capri and Baiae fashionable in the days of
ancient Rome. Neither Tiberius nor Caligula, nor yet Ferdinand of Aragon
or Bomba for that matter, has been able to leave trace of vice or scar
of crime on nature in this Eden. A row round the island, or a
supper-party in the loggia above the sea at sunset-time, is no less
charming now, in spite of Roman or Spanish memories, than when the world
was young.

Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the
cliffs of Capri in impenetrable wool and brooding on the perfectly
smooth water till the day-wind rises. Then they disappear like
magic, rolling in smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea,
condensing into clouds and climbing the hillsides like Oceanides in
quest of Prometheus, or taking their station on the watch-towers of
the world, as in the chorus of the _Nephelai_. Such a morning may be
chosen for the _giro_ of the island. The blue grotto loses nothing
of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense
fog you find yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous
sheen. It is only through the opening of the very topmost arch that
a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward
through the water, so that all the light is transmitted from beneath
and coloured by the sea. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and
the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with
black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue white sand. The flesh of
a diver in this water showed like the faces of children playing at
snapdragon; all around him the spray leapt up with living fire; and
when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosphorescent
sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue
pearls. I have only once seen anything (outside the magic-world of a
pantomime) to equal these effects of blue and silver; and that was
when I made my way into an ice-cave in the Great Aletsch
glacier--not an artificial gallery such as they cut at Grindelwald,
but a natural cavern, arched, hollowed into fanciful recesses, an