'
Fifthly, the fire shower--
'Scopulos avulsaque viscera montis
Erigit erucatans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras
Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exae tuat imo.'
Sixthly the column of ash--
'Atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem
Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla.'
And this is within the limits of twelve lines. Modern poetry has its own
merits, but the conveyance of information is not, generally speaking,
one of them. What would Virgil have thought of authors publishing poems
with explanatory notes (to illustrate is a different matter), as if they
were so many books of conundrums? Indeed this vice is of very
late years."
The entire description, of which this is but an extract, is very
effective and animated, and gives with great vividness the first
impressions of a mind susceptible to the grand and imposing aspects
of nature.
"After Etna," says Mr. Gladstone in his diary, "the temples are
certainly the great charm and attraction of Sicily. I do not know
whether there is any one among them which, taken alone, exceeds in
beauty that of Neptune, at Paestum; but they have the advantage of
number and variety, as well as of highly interesting positions. At
Segesta the temple is enthroned in a perfect mountain solitude, and it
is like a beautiful tomb of its religion, so stately, so entire; while
around, but for one solitary house of the keeper, there is nothing,
absolutely nothing, to disturb the apparent reign of Silence and of
Death.
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