the atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo — the mighty work of the old Cimmerians — and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render palpable and defined: — for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang — is the Heart of dreaming Youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her castles in the air. Who doth not do the same — not in youth alone, but with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man's prerogative to dream, the common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were more habitual, distinct, and solemn, than the greater part of us indulge. They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks — prophets while phantasma.
