SEA VIEWS AND LANDSCAPES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3150, 2 August 1881, Page 4

SEA VIEWS AND LANDSCAPES.

Tha distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain overlooking a great plain or viewed from heights that dominate the •ea, principally lies in this ; that while tho 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, and variety of tone, and luminous effect to tbe sea, compensating in some measure for the lack of those associations which render the outlook over a wide extent of populatod land so thrilling. The emergence of towered cities into sunlight at the skirts of moving shadows, tho liquid lapse of rivers half disclosed by windings among woods, the upturned mirrors of unruffled lakes, are wanting to the- sea. For suoh 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 tho empurpled shadows, toned by amethyst or opal, or shining with violet light, reflected from the clouds, thafc 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. Tho 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 lips 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 Possilippo on the left, along the palaces of the Ohiaja, up to Sfc. Elmo on the hill, past Santa Lucia, down on the Marinella, beyond Portia", beyond Tore del •ou.-O, where Vesuvius towered up aloof, an angry mount of amethystine gloom, the conflagration spread and reached Pompeii, and on Torre dell' Annunziata. Stationary.tßurid, it smouldered while the day died slowly. The long, densely populated sealine from Bozzuoli 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. Tfc 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 descended on their towers before they Ipiif&bled into dust. —Cornhill Magazine.' '''*'■*'>L