Aequora tuta silent.—Aen. i. 163.
It was like the place—nay, perhaps it was the place—whose inviolable stillness and stupendous barriers Virgil so divinely describes; and whenever those still words, “Aequora tuta silent” recur to my memory, so does this scene.
This is “secessu longo locus.”
* * * * *
A fleet from England declared to be in the offing was a subject of great interest at Malta. We used to repair immediately to the leads of the Palace, whose great height, carrying the sight clear over every obstruction of tower, church, and fortress, displayed the wide ocean to our view, covered with the expected ships, their swelling sails as white as wool, and the sea and sky more blue and bright than all comparisons.
Pleasant and full of expectation it was to watch them successively steering into the narrow port; some stately and huge, plumed with the pennant of command, displayed the broad and checkered sides of battle; others more humble, but innumerable; all in gallant trim and guided seamanlike.
Then eager for the mail! the image of home imprisons the truant soul, and brings it back to its first tenderness; the sight of the well-known but long-suspended hand, the endearing accents which distance has made so infrequent; that day, at least, is sacred to home; and if the tidings have been cheering, though the eye may glisten and the cheek of the young soldier may flush with unwonted tenderness, yet is his heart neither solitary nor sad; his friends partake of some reflection of the kindness that his soul is inwardly pouring out to his parents and his brothers.
It is time to close the chapter on Malta, but before leaving I wrote home to my mother.
La Valetta, Malta, August 15, 1805.
Dearest Dona Rafela—I believe this will be brought to England by an officer who has obtained leave. I do not know him. Nothing at all remarkable has happened since I wrote last. We made an excursion to the island of Gozo, which is much better-looking than that of Malta. There is more green and romanticity, but all prospect here is in the sublime, for you see grateful coincidence of rock, sea, and sky, which can stretch the mind to great capacity. But where, my dear mother, are the flowery meads, the green pastures, the murmuring streams that may soothe the mind into content with itself and charity to all around? Hot stone houses, hot brown ground—hot, hot, all hot.