sleep in their solemn gray and dun. At the southwest of us, the lashed sea is still raging; but the clouds above its dark bosom rest peacefully in their hundred evening hues, which the sun, in atonement for his day's absence, now loans to these airy voyagers.

But, it was as we tacked ships, to stand off from the land, amid this exhibition of the mystic in our north, and beauty in our west, that an omen gleamed above us, fair and bright as the one which shone in the heavens, on the eve of our departure from our first anchorage-ground, in our western land. Directly above our main, in the zenith

of his glory,

“The bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars,”

The

looked benignantly from out his azure hall upon us. sky, over our heads, was blue, deep, and clear; and no other brilliant was seen in the high heavens; while the moon, in her path of peerless loveliness, this night, was throwing the soft beams of her first quarter over our right shoulders. The air was balmy to the cheek; and we were happy as we paced the deck, and talked of things associated with the Madeiras, and friends, and home.

SECTION III.

Madeira. Funchal, capital of Madeira. Quintas. Fortresses. Santa Clara convent. Shrubbery and vines. Olden associations. The influence of beautiful nature. Visit to the shore. Breakfast with the American Consul. Invitation to visit Santa Clara convent. Ride to the Nos. sa Senhora do Monte, or the Church of our Lady of the Mount. Visit Mr. Blandy's Quinta. Avenues of geraniums and roses. View from the terrace-house. Miracles of our Lady of the Mount. Portuguese seamen pledge their top-sail to this patron saint to propitiate her favor in danger. Priest and his present of eggs. The Catholic system. A pile of human bones. Portuguese bury in their churches. New cemetery. Visit to Santa Clara convent. English burial ground. Portuguese funeral. The daughter of the deceased visiting England. Ride to the Curral. Scenes on the road. Peasantry. The grounds of Count Carvalhal. Ramble through the grounds of Palmyra. Mr. and Miss O. Miss O.'s opinion of Abbot's Works. The Til. Moving by torch-light through the streets at night. Palanquin. Easy manners of the Portuguese. English yatch commanded by a lady. Legend of the Madeiras. Cultivation of the grape and process of making wine. Tinto. Malmsey, Quantity of wine produced. Last eve on shore, and good-night to Madeira.

We have come to anchor, in full view of one of nature's most beautiful landscapes. Funchal, the capital of Madeira, is about two miles from our frigate; and the southern exposure of the island lies, in its enchantment, before us. Think of a fairy isle, raising its high peaks abruptly 8,000 feet above the bosom of the blue deep, and tracing its waved outline indistinctly among the mystic and dark clouds, which hang, like spirit-shapes, on its high and misty cones; while, everywhere else, around and further yet above the cloud-capt peaks, the sky is blue and clear; and the soft breeze and the mimic gale from the sea strike balmy, like an eastern atmosphere, upon the cheek. And then, think of the elevated acclivities, and deep ravine, broken into thousand crests, throwing their every-shaped shadows over their own mountainous and cragged and unique landscape; and every peak, and every slope, and every ravine, covered with vineyard and garden, and ever-green tree and shrub and flower, varying from the palest gold of harvest time to the deepest and prevailing verdure of the freshest meadow; and then the villas, or country residences of the English mer

chants and the wealthier Portuguese, which are here called quintas, of all dimensions, with red-tiled tops, and piazza and balcony and corridors for promenade and look-outs, and trellised terraces for the embowering vines; and then, the antique cathedral and the ancient fortress, and the sacred convent; and then, the mountain, capped with an eternal cloud, and the far-surrounding ocean, in eternal blue, and you will have some of the outlines, which go to make up one of the most glowing pictures of the beautiful I ever saw. It is almost perfect as a specimen of rural scenery of its kind. It only needs a few castles on some of the high peaks of the elevated positions, to render it quite so.

The houses of Funchal rise one above the other, from the edge of the sea, which tumbles its breakers, incessantly upon the narrow and dark-pebbled beach. The Loo fort is seen on the right of the city, constructed on the top of a rectangular rock of basalt, encrusted with the outer honey-comb layer of lava; and rises from out the sea a few yards from the main beach.

Another fortress is situated near the sea, and is still garrisoned. Between the two lie the pile of buildings, occupied by the Franciscan monks before their expulsion from the island, but now possessed as barracks for the Governor's guards. Further up, the convent of Santa Clara, with its dusky and rectangular walls, appears above city spire and city dwellings. Ascending still higher the steep acclivity, rising like an amphitheatre before you, the beautiful quintas of the English merchants and the Portuguese, are seen, every way, studding the elevated points, and lay before the enchanted eye embowered in nature's freshest green, amid shrubs, and orange trees, and figs, and citrons, and bananas, the coffee tree, and the pomegranate; with every other point, unoccupied by shrub and tree, covered with spacious areas of trellised vines, in their richest foliage, the whole together exhibiting one blended scene of rural loveliness, too distant to enable one to particularize the different kind of shrub, and tree, and flower, but delighting the beholder with the blended beauties of one of nature's own amphitheatres, where she has poured out, with the munificence of her

tropical hand, the gorgeous magnificence of a perennial green-house. And still above all this beauty of vine, and shrub, and tree, and folia of fig and orange and pomegranate, and the beautiful quintas, and the imposing turret, and fortress, and convent, stands in lovely and bold relief, the Nossa Senhora do Monte, or the Church of our Lady of the Mount. It is the highest building seen, and rivets the eye of the stranger. Its proportions are in keeping, and its two turrets, rising on either side of the front, give the picturesque edifice the loveliest appearance, as it rests, in its quiet repose, and high-up retirement. Its white walls are beautifully relieved by one extended curtain of green, which rises still further above its white walls to meet the clouds in their ever undulating volumes. And from the commanding front of this solitary building, you gaze on all this beauty below, in its blended grandeur and loveliness; on the vast ocean, from whose blue bosom the green isle awakes; and now upon our own sleeping war-ships, as they ride, in their security and distance, like mimic models of their own beautiful reality, on the edge of the broad expanse of the boundless main. But still further up from the nestling place of our Lady of the Mount, the green mountain steeps are coated in verdant shrub and tear grass, and flowering broom, and heath, and sweet balm, until the veil of the dark spirit of the mountain-heights, forbids the eye to penetrate her loftier and clouded home. Surely the Fairy-Queen poet dreamed not of a lovlier scene than this, wherever his vision was bearing him in the following lines:

It was a chosen spot of blooming land,

Amongst wide waves, set like a little nest,
As if it had by nature's cunning hand
Been choicely picked out from all the rest,
And laid forth as example of the best.

No daintie herb, or flower, that glows on ground,
No arboreth with painted blossoms drest,
And smiling sweet, but there it might be found,

To bud out fair, and her sweet fragrance throw around.

And all this I gaze upon, as I stand, lost in delightful