Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/292

 One of our favourite rides is to the other side of the promontory, where a natural arch once stood, resembling the Presbisch Thor of the Saxon Switzerland; it is now broken and ruined. Once, going there, my friends thought that they could easily reach the sands beneath and bathe, or find a boat to take them to the rocks of the Syrens; but after a rough precipitous descent of some length, they found the way grow on them: they were apparently as far off as ever from the sea, and they returned.

I spend the evenings on our terrace. The nights here are wonderful; and I am never weary of observing the loveliness of the skies. Twenty-four o’clock, a moveable hour which is fixed for half an hour after sunset, never, in this climate, falls later than half-past eight. By that time it is night; but the extreme purity of the atmosphere gives to darkness a sort of brilliancy, such as a black shining object has. The sea is dark and bright at the same time; the high coast around does not assume that gigantic, misty appearance, hills do in the North during dusk, but they stand out as well defined as by day. If there be a moon, we see it floating in mid-air. We perceive at once that it is not a shining shape, plastered, as it were, against the sky; but a ball which, all bright, or partly dusky, hangs pendant. Its light is painfully bright; the