'that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and say--
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief.')

Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and
we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town
and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was
situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked
beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and in the
evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on,
and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: Nature was
bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic
terror, such as we had never before witnessed.

At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such
in Italy, generally roofed: this one was very small, yet not only roofed
but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide
prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The
storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most
picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark
lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts that
churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered
by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it
almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his
health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he
wrote the principal part of "The Cenci". He was making a study of