What he admired and loved, his vital power
Unfolded into being. Hence the breath
Of life, informing each organic frame;
Hence the green earth, and wild resounding waves;
Hence light and shade, alternate; warmth and cold;
And bright autumnal skies, and vernal showers,
And all the fair variety of things.”—Akenside.
The most sublime object, however, which the summit of Etna presents, is the immense mass of its own colossal body. Its upper region exhibits rough and craggy cliffs, rising perpendicularly, fearful to the view, and surrounded by an assemblage of fugitive clouds, to increase the wild variety of the scene. Amid the multitude of woods in the middle or temperate region, are numerous mountains, which, in any other situation, would appear of a gigantic size, but which, compared to Etna, are mere mole-hills. Lastly, the eye contemplates with admiration the lower region, the most extensive of the three, adorned with elegant villas and castles, verdant hills and flowery fields, and terminated by the extensive coast, where to the south stands the beautiful city of Catania, to which the waves of the neighboring sea serve as a mirror.
Etna has been celebrated as a volcano from the remotest antiquity. Eruptions are recorded by Diodorus Siculus, as having happened five hundred years before the Trojan war, or sixteen hundred and ninety-three years before the Christian era.
“Etna roars with dreadful ruins nigh,