the vague figures that grew and faded upon the haze, as my eye fell
upon them, like the intermittent characters of sympathetic ink when
heat touches them.

Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in which we sailed, and then
cold as the breath of a polar ocean. The perfume of new-mown hay and
the breath of roses, came mingled with the distant music of bells, and
the twittering song of birds, and a low surf-like sound of the wind in
summer woods. There were all sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil
landscape such as Prue loves--and which shall be painted as the
background of her portrait whenever she sits to any of my many artist
friends--and that pastoral beauty shall be called England; I strained
my eyes into the cruel mist that held all that music and all that
suggested beauty, but I could see nothing. It was so sweet that I
scarcely knew if I cared to see. The very thought of it charmed my
senses and satisfied my heart. I smelled and heard the landscape that
I could not see.

Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of blossoming vineyards was
wafted across the air; the flowery richness of orange groves, and the
sacred odor of crushed bay leaves, such as is pressed from them when
they are strewn upon the flat pavement of the streets of Florence, and
gorgeous priestly processions tread them under foot. A steam of
incense filled the air. I smelled Italy--as in the magnolia from
Bourne's garden--and, even while my heart leaped with the
consciousness, the odor passed, and a stretch of burning silence
succeeded.

It was an oppressive zone of heat--oppressive not only from its
silence, but from the sense of awful, antique forms, whether of art or