The storm-clouds at this season, though it is the bloom of May, are
daily piled in sulky or menacing masses over Vesuvius and the Abruzzi,
frothing out their curls of moulded mist across the bay, and climbing
the heavens with toppling castle towers and domes of alabaster.
We made the most of a tranquil afternoon, where there was an armistice
of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro. A ruined fort caps that
limestone bulwark; and there we lay together, drinking the influences of
sea, sun, and wind. Immeasurably deep beneath us plunged the precipices,
deep, deep descending to a bay where fisher boats were rocking,
diminished to a scale that made the fishermen in them invisible. Low
down above the waters wheeled white gulls, and higher up the hawks and
ospreys of the cliff sailed out of sunlight into shadow. Immitigable
strength is in the moulding of this limestone, and sharp, clear
definiteness marks yon clothing of scant brushwood where the fearless
goats are browsing. The sublime of sculpturesque in crag structure is
here, refined and modulated by the sweetness of sea distances. For the
air came pure and yielding to us over the unfooted sea; and at the
basement of those fortress-cliffs the sea was dreaming in its caves;
and far away, to east and south and west, soft light was blent with mist
upon the surface of the shimmering waters.
The distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain overlooking a
great plain, or viewed from heights that, like this, dominate the sea,
principally lies in this: that while the former only offer cloud shadows
cast upon the fields below our feet, in the latter these shadows are
diversified with cloud reflections. This gives superiority in qualities
of colour, variety of tone, and luminous effect to the sea, compensating
in some measure for the lack of those associations which render the
outlook over a wide extent of populated land so thrilling. The emergence
of towered cities into sunlight at the skirts of moving shadows, the
liquid lapse of rivers half disclosed by windings among woods, the
upturned mirrors of unruffled lakes, are wanting to the sea. For such
episodes the white sails of vessels, with all their wistfulness of going
to and fro on the mysterious deep, are but a poor exchange. Yet the
sea-lover may justify his preference by appealing to the beauty of
empurpled shadows, toned by amethyst or opal or shining with violet
light, reflected from the clouds that cross and find in those dark
shields a mirror. There are suggestions, too, of immensity, of liberty,
of action, presented by the boundless horizons and the changeful
changeless tracts of ocean which no plain possesses.
It was nigh upon sunset when we descended to Ana-Capri. That evening the
clouds assembled suddenly. The armistice of storm was broken. They were
terribly blue, and the sea grew dark as steel beneath them, till the
moment when the sun's lip reached the last edge of the waters. Then a
courier of rosy flame sent forth from him passed swift across the gulf,
touching, where it trod, the waves with accidental fire. The messenger
reached Naples; and in a moment, as by some diabolical illumination, the
sinful city kindled into light like glowing charcoal. From Posilippo on
the left, along the palaces of the Chiaja, up to S. Elmo on the hill,
past Santa Lucia, down on the Marinella, beyond Portici, beyond Torre
del Greco, where Vesuvius towered up aloof, an angry mount of
amethystine gloom, the conflagration spread and reached Pompeii, and
dwelt on Torre dell'Annunziata. Stationary, lurid, it smouldered while
the day died slowly. The long, densely populated sea-line from Pozzuoli
to Castellammare burned and smoked with intensest incandescence, sending
a glare of fiery mist against the threatening blue behind, and fringing
with pomegranate-coloured blots the water where no light now lingered.
It is difficult to bend words to the use required. The scene in spite of
natural suavity and grace, had become like Dante's first glimpse of the
City of Dis--like Sodom and Gomorrah when fire from heaven descended on
their towers before they crumbled into dust.