this time I failed to make my appearance, she should then pursue her voyage. We weighed anchor at one in the morning of the 1st of August. The wind was contrary as we left the harbour. Istria exhibited a low tract of coast, bordered in the interior of the country by a chain of mountains. The Mediterranean, placed in the centre of the civilized world, studded with smiling islands, and washing shores planted with the myrtle, the palm, and the olive, instantly reminds the spectator of that sea which gave birth to Apollo, to the Nereids, and to Venus; whereas the ocean deformed by tempests, surrounded by unknown regions, was well calculated to be the cradle of the phantoms of Scandinavia, or the domain of those Christian nations who form such an awful idea of the greatness and omnipotence of God. On the 2nd, about noon, the wind became favourable, but the clouds which gathered in the west announced an approaching storm. We heard the first clap of thunder off the coast of Croatia: at three o'clock the sails were furled, and a taper was set up in the captain's cabin, at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin. I have elsewhere remarked how affecting is that religion which ascribes the dominion over tempests, or rather the power of appeasing them, to a feeble woman. Sailors on shore may turn free-thinkers as well as any others, but human wisdom is disconcerted in the hour of danger; man then becomes reli gious; and the torch of philosophy cheers him in the midst of a storm, much less than a lamp lighted up before the Madonna. At seven in the evening the tempest was at its height. Our Austrian captain began a prayer amid torrents of rain and peals of thunder. We prayed for Francis II. for ourselves, and for the mariners sepolti in questo sacro mare. The sailors, some standing and uncovered, others prostrate upon the deck, also prayed responsive to the captain. The storm continued during part of the night, All the sails being furled, and the crew having gone below, I remained almost alone by the steersman at the helm. In this situation I had formerly passed whole nights on the most tempestuous seas; but I was then young, and the roar of the billows, the solitude of ocean, winds, rocks, and dangers, were to me so many sources of enjoyment. I have perceived in this last voyage that the face of objects has changed for me. I am now capable of duly appreciating all those reveries of early youth; and yet such is the inconsistency of man, that I again listened to the syren voice of hope, that I again went forth to collect images, and to seek colours with which to adorn pictures, destined perhaps to draw down upon me vexations and persecution. I paced the quarter-deck, and from time to time scrawled a note with my pencil by the light of the lamp placed near the compass in the steerage. The man at the helm looked at me with astonishment: he took me I suppose for a French naval officer, busily engaged like himself with the ship's course---he knew not that my compass was not so good as his, and that he should make the port with greater certainty than I. The next day, August 3rd, the wind having settled in the north-west, we swiftly passed the isles of Pommo and Pelagosa. Leaving the last of the islands of Dalmatia on our left, we descried on our right Mount St. Angelo, the ancient Garganus, which covers Manfredonia, near the ruins of Sipontum, on the coast of Italy. On the 4th it fell calm: a breeze sprung up at sun-set, and we continued our course. At two o'clock, the night being magnificent, I heard a cabin-boy singing the commencement of the seventh canto of the Jerusalem: Intanto Erminia infra l'ombrose piante, &c. The tune was a kind of recitative, very high in the intonation, and descending to the lowest notės towards the conclusion of the verse. This picture of rural felicity delineated by a mariner in the midst of the sea, appeared to me more enchanting than ever. The ancients, our masters in every thing, well knew the effect of these moral contrasts. Theocritus has sometimes placed his swains on the margin of the deep; and Virgil loves to bring together the recreations of the husbandman, and the labours of the mariner: Invitat genialis hyems, curasque resolvit : On the 5th the wind was violent: it brought us a greyish bird, nearly resembling a lark: it was hospitably received. Sailors are in general pleased with whatever forms a contrast to their turbulent life: they delight in every thing connected with the remembrance of rural life, as the barking of dogs, the crowing of the cock, the flight of land birds. At eleven in the morning of the same day we were at the gates of the Adriatic: that is to say, between Cape Otranto in Italy, and Linguetta in Albania. I was now on the frontiers of Grecian antiquity, as well as on the confines of Latin antiquity. Pythagoras, Alcibiades, Scipio, Cæsar, Pompey, Cicero, Augustus, Horace, Virgil had crossed this sea. What different fortunes all those celebrated characters consigned to the inconstancy of these same billows! And I, an obscure traveller, passing over the effaced track of the vessels which carried the great men of Greece and Italy, was repairing to their native land in quest of the Muses; but I am not Virgil, and the gods no longer dwell upon Olympus. We advanced towards the island of Fano: it bears together with the rock of Merlera, the name of Othonos or Calypso's island, in some ancient maps. D'Anville seems to distinguish it by this appellation; and M. Lechevalier adduces the authority of this geographer in support of his opinion that Fano was the place where Ulysses so long deplored his absent country. Procopius somewhere observes, that if one of the small islands surrounding Corfu be taken for the island of Calypso, this will give probability to Homer's narrative. In this case, indeed, a boat would suffice to proceed from this island to that of Scheria (Corcyra, or Corfu ;) but the passage must have been attended with great difficulties. Ulysses departs with a favourable wind, and after a voyage of eighteen days, he perceives Scheria rising like a shield above the surface of the deep. Now if Fano be Calypso's island, it is close to Scheria. Instead of requiring a navigation of eighteen whole days to descry the coast of Corfu, Ulysses must have seen it from the wood where he constructed his vessel. Pliny, Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela, the anonymous author of Ravenna, throw no light on this subject; but Wood and the moderns may be consulted respecting the geography of Homer. All these, with Strabo, place the island of Calypso in that part of the Mediterranean situated between Africa and Malta. For the rest, Fano shall be with all my heart the enchanted island of Calyps, though to me it appeared but a small heap of whitish rocks: I will there plant, if you please, with Homer, " a forest, dried by the sun's fervid rays, of pines and alders filled with the nests of sea-crows;" or with Fenelon, "I will there find groves of orange-trees, and mountains whose singular shapes form an horizon as diversified as the eye could wish." I envy not |