Dinner passed pleasantly; we had a very agreeable captain, and the smoothness of the water enabled the ladies to enjoy it in comfort, and also to spend an hour or two on deck afterwards, in the full beauty of the clear moon and cloudless star-lit skies—
"Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close
Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odours keen:
And where the Baian ocean
Welters with air-like motion,
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green."
Who could be surrounded by such influences without thinking kindly and tender thoughts of the glorious land that owns such a sea and sky? I mused over Italy—her past, her present, and the bright future which I hope awaits her. The Papal star is growing dim; the pageantry of the Dark Ages is fading out, and the minds of men awakening. Slowly, but I trust surely, a more enlightened era is approaching; and perhaps the nineteenth century will see the last of superstition, which has held the minds and hearts of men in such an iron grasp.
God has His own wondrous and omnipotent way of working, and man can but guess at the manner and means by which the problems that perplex him will be solved in the end.
"Great Spirit, deepest Love!
Which rulest and dost move
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
Who spreadest heaven around it,
Whose woods, rocks, waves surround it;
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor!
* * * * * *
"Oh, with thy harmonizing ardours fill
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire—
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire,
The instrument to work Thy Will divine!"
The next morning we found ourselves close to the Stromboli group of islands. Nearly all were capped with snow, and, with the sea around and the blue sky above, formed a charming picture.
Soon after breakfast we were steaming through the beautiful straits, and passing the famous Scylla and Charybdis, the former a low dark cliff topped by an old castle, and with a little town nestling below. The sea varied its colour constantly—blue, green, brown, and even red, mingling and changing in the bright sunshine. As we neared Messina, we were struck with admiration at its exceeding beauty.
"Messina sits like a queen, her white robes sweeping the sea. Never was city so exquisitely poised between earth and sky! Very beautiful, with fair white face, the poetic lines of your mountain drapery about you; the azure straits gliding past you in homage, and bringing the world's treasures to your feet! Very beautiful, but false and fickle and cowardly in every phase of your history, a ready victim for every invader, a facile prey, ever siding with the strongest!"