Even in the long and
luxuriant views from Capo di Monte, and the heights to the east of
Naples, the spectator looks over a series of volcanic eminences,
generally, indeed, covered with rich verdure, but starting out here and
there in gray and worn walls, fixed at a regular slope, and breaking
away into masses more and more rugged towards Vesuvius, till the eye
gets thoroughly habituated to their fortress-like outlines.
[Illustration: Fig. 10. Petrarch's Villa; Arqua.--1837.]
140. Throughout the whole of this broken country, and, on the summits of
these volcanic cones, rise innumerable villas; but they do not offend
us, as we should have expected, by their attestation of cheerfulness of
life amidst the wrecks left by destructive operation, nor hurt the eye
by non-assimilation with the immediate features of the landscape: but
they seem to rise prepared and adapted for resistance to, and endurance
of, the circumstances of their position; to be inhabited by beings of
energy and force sufficient to decree and to carry on a steady struggle
with opposing elements, and of taste and feeling sufficient to
proportion the form of the walls of men to the clefts in the flanks of
the volcano, and to prevent the exultation and the lightness of
transitory life from startling, like a mockery, the eternal remains of
disguised desolation.
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