There should have been a poet in our company to describe that charming little bay of Glaucus, into which we entered on the 26th of September, in the first steam-boat that ever disturbed its beautiful waters. You can’t put down in prose that delicious episode of natural poetry; it ought to be done in a symphony, full of sweet melodies and swelling² harmonies; or sung in a strain of clear crystal iambics, such as Milnes knows how to write. A mere³ map, drawn⁴ in words, gives the mind no notion of that exquisite⁵ nature. What do mountains become in type, or rivers in Mr. Vizetelly’s best brevier? Here lies the sweet bay, gleaming peaceful in the rosy⁶ sunshine: green islands dip here and there in its waters: purple mountains swell¹ circling round it; and towards them, rising from the bay, stretches a rich green plain, fruitful with herbs and various foliage⁷, in the midst of which the white houses twinkle. I can see a little minaret⁸, and some spreading palm-trees; but, beyond these, the description would answer as well for Bantry Bay as for Makri. You could write so far, nay⁹, much more particularly and grandly, without seeing the place at all, and after reading Beaufort’s “Caramania,” which gives you not the least notion of it.

Suppose the great Hydrographer of the Admiralty himself can’t describe it, who surveyed the place; suppose Mr. Fellowes, who discovered it afterwards — suppose, I say, Sir John Fellowes, Knt., can’t do it (and I defy any man of imagination to got an impression of Telmessus from his book)— can you, vain man, hope to try? The effect of the artist, as I take it, ought to be, to produce upon his hearer’s mind, by his art, an effect something similar to that produced on his own by the sight of the natural object. Only music, or the best poetry, can do this. Keats’s “Ode to the Grecian

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