Thus, through dells of ilex and oak, yielding now a glimpse of Tiber
and S. Peter's, now opening on a purple section of the distant Sabine
Hills, we came to Monte Rotondo. The sun sank; and from the flames
where he had perished, Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen,
grew slowly into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying,
turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This
changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to
valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon,
and a green ocean above, in which sea-monsters fashioned from the
clouds are floating. Yonder swims an elf with luminous hair astride
upon a sea-horse, and followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery
waves. The orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into
daffodil and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the moon and
stars shine stronger.

Through these celestial changes we glide into a landscape fit for
Francia and the early Umbrian painters. Low hills to right and left;
suavely modelled heights in the far distance; a very quiet width of
plain, with slender trees ascending into the pellucid air; and down in
the mystery of the middle distance a glimpse of heaven-reflecting
water. The magic of the moon and stars lends enchantment to this
scene. No painting could convey their influences. Sometimes both
luminaries tremble, all dispersed and broken, on the swirling river.
Sometimes they sleep above the calm cool reaches of a rush-grown mere.
And here and there a ruined turret, with a broken window and a tuft
of shrubs upon the rifted battlement, gives value to the fading pallor
of the West. The last phase in the sunset is a change to blue-grey
monochrome, faintly silvered with starlight; hills, Tiber, fields and
woods, all floating in aërial twilight. There is no definition of
outline now. The daffodil of the horizon has faded into scarcely