Let not, however, the doubts of the worldly-wise sceptics of modern days
rob us of all the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of
yore. Be assured, O reader of easy faith!--thou for whom I delight to
labor--be assured, that such an island does actually exist, and has,
from time to time, been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet,
of favored mortals. Nay, though doubted by historians and philosophers,
its existence is fully attested by the poets, who, being an inspired
race, and gifted with a kind of second sight, can see into the mysteries
of nature, hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals. To this gifted race
it has ever been a region of fancy and romance, teeming with all kinds
of wonders. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous
garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, was the
enchanted garden of Armida, in which that sorceress held the Christian
paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious but inglorious thraldom; as is set forth
in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was on this island, also, that Sycorax,
the witch, held sway, when the good Prospero, and his infant daughter
Miranda, were wafted to its shores. The isle was then

---"full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."

Who does not know the tale, as told in the magic page of Shakspeare?

In fact, the island appears to have been, at different times, under the
sway of different powers, genii of earth, and air, and ocean; who made
it their shadowy abode; or rather, it is the retiring place of old
worn-out deities and dynasties, that once ruled the poetic world,
but are now nearly shorn of all their attributes. Here Neptune and
Amphitrite hold a diminished court, like sovereigns in exile. Their
ocean-chariot lies bottom upward, in a cave of the island, almost a