I heard a rustle as an old fig tree hard by dropped its latest leaves.

On the sea-bank of yellow crumbling earth lizards flashed about me in the sunshine.

After a dull morning, the day had passed into golden serenity; a stillness as of eternal peace held earth and sky.
"Dearest of all to me is that nook of earth which yields not to Hymettus for its honey, nor for its olive to green Venafrum; where heaven grants a long springtime and warmth in winter, and in the sunny hollows Bacchus fosters a vintage noble as the Falernian----" The lines of Horace sang in my head; I thought, too, of the praise of Virgil, who, tradition has it, wrote his _Eclogues_ hereabouts.

Of course, the country has another aspect, in spring and early summer; I saw it at a sad moment; but, all allowance made for seasons, it is still with wonder that one recalls the rapture of the poets.

A change beyond conception must have come upon these shores of the Ionian Sea.