say we.


JOURNEY TO TAORMINA.

We left Messina under a sky which no painter would or could attempt;
indeed, it would not have looked well on paper, or out of reality.
There are certain unusual, yet magnificent appearances in nature,
from which the artist conventionally abstains, not so much from the
impotence of art, as that the nearer his approach to success the
worse the picture. At one time the colours were like shot or clouded
silk, or the beautiful uncertainty of the Palamida of these shores,
or the matrix of opal; at another, the Pacific Ocean above, of which
the continuity is often for whole months _entire_, was broken into
gigantic continents and a Polynesia of rose-coloured islands that no
ships might approach; while in this nether world the middle of the
Calabro-Sicilian strait was occupied by a condensation of vapour,
(one could never profane them by the term of _sea-mist_ or _fog_,)
the most subtile and attenuated which ever came from the realms of
cloud-compelling Jove. This fleecy tissue pursued its deliberate
progress from coast to coast, like a cortege of cobwebs carrying a
deputation from the power-looms of _Arachne_ in _Italy_ to the rival
silk-looms at Catania. We pass the dry beds of mountain torrents at
every half mile, ugly gashes on a smooth road; and requiring too much
caution to leave one's attention to be engaged by many objects
altogether new and beautiful. The rich yellow of the _Cactus_, and
the red of the _Pomegranate_, and the most tender of all vegetable
greens, that of the young _mulberry_, together with a sweet
wilderness of unfamiliar plants, are not to be perfectly enjoyed on a
fourfooted animal that stumbles, or on a road full of pitfalls. We