"
"The lady of the sea-green mantle does not permit an idle servant. We
follow the direction of her guiding hand; sometimes it points our course
among the isles of the Adriatic, and at others on your stormy American
coasts. There is little of Europe between Gibraltar and the Cattegat, that
I have not visited."
"But Italy has been the favorite, if one may judge by the number of her
fabrics that you produce."
"Italy, France, and Flanders, divide my custom; though you are right, in
believing the former most in favor. Many years of early life did I pass on
the noble coasts of that romantic region. One who protected and guided my
infancy and youth, even left me for a time, under instruction, on the
little plain of Sorrento."
"And where can this plain be found?--for the residence of so famous a
rover may, one day, become the theme of song, and is likely to occupy the
leisure of the curious."
"The grace of the speaker may well excuse the irony! Sorrento is a village
on the southern shore of the renowned Naples bay. Fire has wrought many
changes in that soft but wild country, and if, as religionists believe,
the fountains of the great deep were ever broken up, and the earth's crust
disturbed, to permit its secret springs to issue on the surface, this may
have been one of the spots chosen by him whose touch leaves marks that are
indelible, in which to show his power. The bed of the earth, itself, in
all that region, appears to have been but the vomitings of volcanoes; and
the Sorrentine passes his peaceable life in the bed of an extinguished
crater.
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