There is no concealment and no
melancholy here. Nature seems to hold a never-ending festival and dance,
in which the waves and sunbeams and shadows join. Again, in northern
scenery, the rounded forms of full-foliaged trees suit the undulating
country, with its gentle hills and brooding clouds; but in the South the
spiky leaves and sharp branches of the olive carry out the defined
outlines which are everywhere observable through the broader beauties of
mountain and valley and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize
this southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and women lived
beneath the pure light of Phoebus, their ancestral god. Pallas protected
them, and golden Aphrodite favored them with beauty. Olives are not,
however, by any means the only trees which play a part in idyllic scenery.
The tall stone pine is even more important.... Near Massa, by Sorrento,
there are two gigantic pines so placed that, lying on the grass beneath
them, one looks on Capri rising from the sea, Baiae, and all the bay of
Naples sweeping round to the base of Vesuvius.
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