GehejmelegationsraadBilleSteenAndersen

ceeding, came in a few minutes down. Here the sinking sun illuminated the unparalleled landscape spread before us — never have I beheld so glorious a scene, never such a divine contrast — it was like Paradise and Hell contrasted. The serene azure o f an Italian sky with light purple clouds and the blue medi- terranian with its vast and gleaming mirror, the lovely fairy-like islands, the picturesque rocky promontories and indented shores, and the great city with its spires, monasteries, its battlements and castles all bathed in the golden light o f a setting sun — and then behind you the perpetual roar of the volcano recalling the horrid scene o f sulphur-smoke and fire , ashes, stones and the red, liquid Lava — the whole picture o f Nature’s -wild and horrid powers unchained and threatening ruin and devastation to all around — to have witnessed such a contrast is to have fixed a picture and an idea tipon your mind to last with life. What that idea is, 1 scarcely need tell — who has not reflected upon the beauty, serene and heavenly, o f virtue — the dark and dismal abyss o f vice — the precipice by which we stand which parts the one from the other — and who will not find in Vesuvius and the heavenly view from- it a contrast in nature realizing our own thoughts on life /« I Dagbogen finder jeg ogsaa en Beretning om hans Besøg med flere Venner til det skjæbnesvangre Ischia, hvor de paa Tilbagevejen nær havde fundet Døden i et Uvejr: »Every timber in the boat shook and quaked in' the furious battle with the angry sea — the wind grew fea rfu l — and as it came bellowing into the sail bent our boat down into the water. I thought every moment we were about to capsize; the clouds flew overhead with a giddy rapidity — sea gulls with a monotonous cry hurried to the shore — it grew dark as evening and big