Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/387

Rh balconies of the drawing-room and inhale the cool evening air whilst the stars shine above us. The wind is always still in the evenings, the sky is clear and we watch the moon rise behind the hill of San Angelo, or splendid lightning, flashing from fantastic clouds, illumine space. We listen to the singing of the people on the square, whilst they rest in careless enjoyment of the repose of evening and the fruits of the earth. By degrees they sink into silence, and all becomes still, except the splash of the little fountain near the old city-gate in the square and upon the ruins of which stands St. Antonio, as the patron saint of Sorrento. Thus fly the minutes and the hours, and Hercules surrounds his Psyché with his embrace and his heart-felt love, whilst she, leaning against the balustrade, gives herself up to the lovely inspirations of her evening-mood and earnest talk and joke pass between the two. Thus it should be. Sometimes also we read something, in the last instance some of the songs of the Odyssey which ought to be read in these scenes; so full of the achievements or adventures of Ulysses. We delight ourselves with the many fresh expressions and delineations of nature, but we also rejoice to live long after the time, when the “godlike Ulysses,” and his friends, found the supreme enjoyment of life to consist in sitting from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same, at a well-spread board, eating flesh and drinking wine, and listening to love-stories, “which made the goddesses turn away their eyes and the gods to hold their sides for laughter.” We were rejoiced to be living long after the time, when “the good Telemachus” sent his mother to her