creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for
some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds
whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool
beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On
this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic
type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder
us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we
may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of
ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid
ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and
purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted
sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming
hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic
mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of
space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its
level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north
and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it,
and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched
with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at
momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the
south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and
pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and
almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we
gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than
cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry),
the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than
the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable
church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see
little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the
sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and