A landscape of sky, sea, plain, and mountains, great masses majestically grouped, grand in contour! Yet to call it sublime does not render the impression it makes upon the soul. Sublime, indeed, it is at times, and dull were he whose heart from hour to hour awe does not visit here; but constantly the scene is beautiful, and yields that delight which dwells unwearied with the soul. One may be seldom touched to the exaltation which sublimity implies, but to take pleasure in loveliness is the habit of one who lives as heaven made him; and what characterizes this landscape and sets it apart is the permanence of its beauty, its perpetual and perfect charm through every change of light and weather, and in every quarter of its heaven and earth, felt equally whether the eye sweeps the great circuit with its vision, or pauses on the nearer features, for they, too, are wonderfully composed. This hill of my station falls down for half a mile with broken declivities, and then becomes the Cape of Taormina, and takes its steep plunge into the sea. Yonder picturesque peninsula to its left, diminished by distance and strongly relieved on the purple waves, is the Cape of Sant' Andrea, and beside it a cluster of small islands lies nearer inshore. On the other side, to the right of our own cape, shines our port, with Giardini, the village of my fishers' lights, the beach with its boats, and the white main road winding in the narrow level between the bluffs and the sands. The port is guarded on the south by the peninsula of Schiso, where ancient Naxos stood; and just beyond, the river Alcantara cuts the plain and flows to the sea. At the other extremity, northward of Sant' Andrea, is the cove of Letojanni, with its village, and then, perhaps eight miles away, the bold headland of Sant' Alessio closes the shore view with a mass of rock that in former times completely shut off the land approach hither, there being no passage over it, and none around it except by the strip of sand when the sea was quiet. All this ground, with in several villages, from Sant' Alessio to the Alcantara, and beyond into the plain, was anciently the territory of Taormina.
The little city itself lies on its hill, between the bright shore and the gray old castle, on a crescent-like terrace whose two horns jut out into the air like capes. The northern one of these is my station, the site of the old temple and the amphitheatre; the southern one opposite shows the facade of the Dominican convent; and the town circles between, possibly a mile from spur to spur. Here and there long broken lines of the ancient wall, black with age, stride the hillside. A round Gothic tower, built as if for warfare, a square belfry, a ruined gateway, stand out among the humble roofs. Gardens of orange and lemon trees gleam like oblong parks, principally on the upper edge toward the great rock. If you will climb, as I have done, the craggy plateau close by, which overhangs the theatre and obstructs the view of the extreme end of the town at this point, you will see from its level face, rough with the plants of the prickly-pear, a cross on an eminence just below, and the gate toward Messina.