286 PRÆTERITA-II

the sea-a grove of oranges sloping down to the beach, flushed with its light; Gaeta opposite, glittering along its promontory. Ran out to terrace at side of the house, a leaden bit of roof, with pots of orange and Indian fig. There was a range of Skiddaw-like mountains rising from the shore, the ravines just like those of Saddleback, or the west side of Skiddaw; the higher parts bright with fresh-fallen snow; the highest, misty with a touch of soft white, swift* cloud. Nearer, they softened into green, bare masses of hill, like Malvern, but with their tops covered with olives and lines of vine,-the village of Mola showing its white walls and level roofs above the olives, with a breath of blue smoke floating above them, and a long range of distant hills running out into the sea beyond. The air was fresh, and yet so pure and soft, and so full of perfume from the orange trees below the terrace, that it seemed more like an early summer morning than January. It got soon threatening, however, though the sun kept with us as we drove through the village;-confined streets, but bright and varied, down to the shore, and then under the slopes of the snowy precipice, now thoroughly dazzling with the risen sun, and between hedges of tall myrtle, into the plain of Garigliano. A heavy rain-cloud raced † us the ten miles, and stooped over us, stealing the blue sky inch by inch, till it had left only a strip of amber-blue ‡ behind the Apennines, the near hills thrown into deep dark

* Note the instant marking the pace of the cloud,-the work of “Cœli Enarrant”¹ having been begun practically years before this. See below also of the rain-cloud.

† This distinct approach, or chase, by rain-cloud is opposed, in my last lectures on sky, to the gathering of rain-cloud all through the air, under the influence of plague wind.²

‡ Palest transparent blue passing into gold.

¹ [That is, of the Studies of Cloud which Ruskin was at this time intending to collect from Modern Painters. Of Cœli Enarrant, however, only one Part was issued: see Vol. III. p. lxiii.]

² [See The Storm-Cloud, Vol. XXXIV. pp. 10 seq., 30 seq.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]