Of the papers contained in this volume "Taormina" was publishedin the Century Magazine; the others are new. The intentionof the author was to illustrate how poetry, politics, and religionare the flowering of the same human spirit, and have their feedingroots in a common soil, "deep in the general heart of men."
COLUMBIA COLLEGE,
February 22, 1809.
What should there be in the glimmering lights of a poorfishing-village to fascinate me? Far below, a mile perhaps, Ibehold them in the darkness and the storm like some phosphorescenceof the beach; I see the pale tossing of the surf beside them; Ihear the continuous roar borne up and softened about these heights;and this is night at Taormina. There is a weirdness in thescene—the feeling without the reality of mystery; and atevening, I know not why, I cannot sleep without stepping upon theterrace or peering through the panes to see those lights. Atmorning the charm has flown from the shore to the further heightsabove me. I glance at the vast banks of southward-lying cloud thatenvelop Etna, like deep fog upon the ocean; and then, inevitably,my eyes seek the double summit of the Taorminian mountain, risingnigh at hand a thousand feet, almost sheer, less than half a milewestward. The nearer height, precipice-faced, towers full in frontwith its crowning ruined citadel, and discloses, just below thepeak, on an arm of rock toward its right, a hermitage church amongthe heavily hanging mists. The other horn of the massive hill,somewhat more remote, behind and to the old castle's left, exposeson its slightly loftier crest the edge of a hamlet. It, too, iscloud-wreathed—the lonely crag of Mola. Over these hilltops,I know, mists will drift and touch all day; and often they darkenthreateningly, and creep softly down the slopes, and fill thenext-lying valley, and roll, and lift again, and reveal the flankof Monte d'Oro northward on the far-reaching range. As I waswalking the other day, with one of these floating showers gentlyblowing in my face down this defile, I noticed, where the mistshung in fragments from the cloud out over the gulf, how likeair-shattered arches they groined the profound ravine; and thinkinghow much of the romantic charm which delights lovers of themountains and the sea springs from such Gothic moods of nature, Ifelt for a moment something of the pleasure of recognition inmeeting with this northern and familiar element in