CASTELL-A-MARE.

66 Est in secessu longo locus; insula portum
Efficit objectu laterum; quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos.
Hinc atque hinc vastæ rupes, geminique minantur
In cœlum scopuli; quorum sub vertice late
Æquora tuta silent: tum sylvis scena coruscis
Desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra."

VIRGIL.

IT would be difficult, perhaps, to find a town in Italy in the neighbourhood of which is not to be seen some object of remarkable beauty or grandeur. Where it happens that nature is less profuse in her rich gifts than she is in other parts of this wonderful country, there some noble remains of antiquity will meet the eye, to conjure up a crowd of stirring thoughts, sufficient to occupy every issue of the heart, and make it forgetful of every thing but the destinies of man. On the other hand, where there is little to excite emotions of this kind, there nature will be found the everpresent and assiduous handmaid of thought; and with her lovely and incessantly renewed productions, her durable forms, her material shadowings and types of things unseen, and her mysterious phenomena; will set the imagination free to form out of these elements a world wild, strange, and beautiful. Such is the case with Castell-a-mare, a town which, if situated any where but in Italy, would be regarded as too insignifi