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« Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown 
Matted and mass’d together, hillocks heap’d 
On what were chambers, arch-crushed, column strown 
In fragments, choked up vaults and frescos steep’d 
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, 
Deeming it midnight.” 
This is desolation ! To such mournful relics it is the 
fittest ornament; yet we sometimes meet with it in live¬ 
lier company and in gayer scenes, and there too it looks 
beautiful. “ Only figure to yourself,” says Gray, writ¬ 
ing from Genoa, “ a vast semicircular basin, full of fine 
blue sea, and vessels of all sorts and sizes, some sailing 
out, some coming in, and others at anchor; and all 
round it palaces and churches peeping over one another’s 
heads, gardens and marble terraces full of orange and 
cypress trees, fountains and trellis-works covered with 
vines, which altogether compose the grandest of theatres.” 
Again he introduces it in a picture, which, though it 
wants the rhythm, has all the glow of poetry:— “ There 
is a moon ! there are stars for you ! Do not you hear 
the fountain? do not you smell the orange flowers? 
That building you see yonder is the convent of St. Isi¬ 
dore; and that eminence with the cypress trees and pines 
upon it, the top of Mount Quirinal.” 
Such a description costs the mind but little effort to 
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