Chapter I: A Landscape in Dalmatia

Music was in the air, and loveliness was spread out over the earth as a mantle.

There was a voice of many waters--the bland musical tone of mountain streams singing as they wend their way over the smooth round pebbles of their hilly bed towards the sea. And the song of life, too, was heard from every field, and every glade, and every valley; the trilling of innumerable birds, the hum of insect myriads, the lowing of distant cattle, winding down from the uplands to pen or fold, the plaintive, subdued bleating of the patient sheep, the merry voice of the light-hearted herd as he led home his flock from the hills, after a long warm southern day in the maturity of spring. Manifold sweet sounds--all blended into one happy harmony, softened by distance, rendered more melodious to the heart by associations felt but not defined, and made more touching by the soft evening hour--filled the whole air, and spread a calm, bright, contemplative charm over the listening senses.

The eye, too, could find the same delight as the ear, equal in depth, similar in character; for though sweet April had sunk in the warm arms of May, still, even in that land of the bright south, the reign of summer had not yet begun: not a leaf, not a flower, not a blade of grass had lost a hue under the beams of the sun, and many a balmy and refreshing shower, during a long and humid spring, had nourished the verdure and enlivened the bloom.

From the high round knoll upon the left, crowned with the five tall cypresses which perhaps flourished as seedlings on that spot in the young and palmy days of Greece, might be seen that unrivalled view which has never yet found eye to gaze on it uncharmed--that view which, of all prospects in the world, has greatest power, when suddenly beheld, to make the heart beat fast, and the breath come thick with mingled feelings of wonder and delight. On one side, at about a mile's distance, where the ground sloped gently down towards the sea, rose the palace of Diocletian, vast and extensive, massy without being heavy, and equally sublime from its beauty and its dimensions. Clear, upon the bright back-ground of the evening sky, cut the graceful lines of the architecture; and, though a sudden break in the outline of the frieze, with the massy form of a fallen capital rolled forward before the steps of the magnificent portico which fronted the sea, told that the busy, unceasing, unsparing hand of man's great enemy had already laid upon that splendid building the crumbling touch of ruin; yet, as, it then stood, with the setting sun behind it, and the deep blue shadows of the evening involving all the minute parts of the side that met the eye, the effects of decay even added to the beauty of the object, by making the straight lines of the architecture at once contrast and harmonize with the graceful irregularities of nature whereby it was surrounded. Several groups of old and stately trees, too, still more diversified the prospect on that side; and through the pillars of the portico might be caught the glistening line of the bright sea where it met and mingled with the sky.

Behind, and to the right hand, stretching far away to the north, rose mountain upon mountain, in all the fanciful forms and positions into which those earth-born giants cast themselves in Greece, and over them all was thrown that lustrous purple which in those lands well deserves the name of the "magic light of evening."

Between the knoll of cypresses, however, and those far hills robed in their golden splendour, lay a wide tract of country, gently sloping upward in a thousand sweeping lines, with here and there an abrupt rock or insulated mound suddenly towering above the rest, while scattered clumps of tall old trees, rich rounded masses of forest, villas, farms, vineyards, and olive grounds, filled up the intervening space; and had all been as it seemed--had all those farms been tenanted, had none of those villas been in ruins--would have presented a scene of prosperity such as the world has never known but once.

Still decay had made no very great progress; still the land was richly cultivated; still the population, though not dense, was sufficient; and as the eye ran along the innumerable little promontories and headlands of the bay, might be seen, rising up above some slight irregularities of the ground, a part of the buildings of the small but prosperous town of Salona. Close by the side of that knoll of cypresses, breaking impetuously from a bank above, dashed on the bright and sparkling Hyader; now fretting and foaming with the large rocks amid which a part of its course was bound; now prattling playfully with the motley pebbles which in other parts strewed its bed; now dashing like a fierce steed all in foam where it leaped over the crag into the sunshine; and then, where its clear blue waters spread out uninterrupted under the cool shadow of a hill, seeming--like time to a young and happy heart--to stand still in calm and peaceful enjoyment, even while it was flowing away as quickly as ever.

The eye that followed the Hyader down its course--and there was an eye that did so--rested on the bright and glowing west, and on the fairest, the most entrancing object of all that magic scene; for there, stretched out beneath the setting sun, lay the gleaming waters of the Adriatic, studded all along its shores with a thousand purple islands which rose out of that golden sea like gems.

The air was calm and tranquil; the sky, the unrivalled deep blue sky, which hangs over that most lovely sea, was without a cloud, varying with one soft and equable declension from the intense purple zenith to the warm rosy hues that glowed in the far west. The sea, also, was smooth and peaceful, and would have seemed unbroken by a wave, had not here and there a sudden bending line of light darted over the bosom of the waters, and told that they were moved in the evening light by the breath of the breeze.

Thus appeared the whole scene, when, from the opposite side of the bay, a white sail was seen to glide forward, as if coming from Salona towards the palace of Diocletian, or the little village of Aspalathus. Slowly and peacefully it moved along, giving one more image of calm and tranquil enjoyment; and while it steered upon its way, four sweet voices, sometimes joined in chorus by several deeper tones, broke forth from the mound of cypresses, singing:--

A HYMN TO THE SETTING SUN.

I.

"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Thy course of beneficence done;
As glorious go down to thy Thetis' warm breast
As when thy bright race was begun.
For all thou hast done
Since thy rising, oh sun!
May thou and thy Maker be bless'd!

Thou hast scatter'd the night from thy broad golden way,
Thou hast given us thy light through a long happy day,
Thou hast roused up the birds, thou hast waken'd the flowers.
To chant on thy path, and to perfume the hours--
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!

II.

"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Yet pause but a moment to shed
One warm look of love on the earth's dewy breast.
Ere the starr'd curtain fall round thy bed,
And to promise the time,
When, awaking sublime,
Thou shall rush all refresh'd from thy rest.

Warm hopes drop like dews from thy life-giving hand,
Teaching hearts closed in darkness like flowers to expand;
Dreams wake into joys when first touch'd by thy light,
As glow the dim waves of the sea at thy sight--
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!

III.

"Slow, slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
Prolonging the sweet evening hour;
Then robe again soon in the morn's golden vest,
To go forth in thy beauty and power.
Yet pause on thy way,
To the full height of day,
For thy rising and setting are bless'd!

When thou com'st after darkness to gladden our eyes,
Or departest in glory, in glory to rise,
May hope and may prayer still be woke by thy rays,
And thy going be mark'd by thanksgiving and praise![1]
Then slow, mighty wanderer, sink to thy rest,
And rise again beautiful, blessing, and bless'd!"

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[Footnote 1: It may not, perhaps, be unnecessary to remind the reader that Christianity, though established in both the eastern and western empires, was still far from universal; and even in the minds of its most enthusiastic votaries was strangely mingled with the picturesque superstitions of a former creed; so that the same man was often a Christian in belief, who was pagan in many of his habits and almost all his familiar expressions.]

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