Non sic virginibus flores, sic frugibus imbres,
Prospera non fessis optantur flumina nautis,
Ut suus aspectus populo.
Of Luna he, &c.
Stanza cxxxv. line 5.
An old commentator says, that Luna was an ancient sea-port in the Genoese territory, on the remains of which another town was built, termed Sarazana. Its name is still perpetuated in an Italian marble quarried in its neighbourhood, which is denominated marmo lunense.
The island of the amorous deity
Breathed upon them an air, in her first port,
Which not alone to man does injury,
But moulders iron; and here life is short;
—A marsh the cause,—and Nature certainly
Wrongs Famagosta, poisoning, in such sort,
That city with Constantia’s fen malign,
To all the rest of Cyprus so benign.
Stanza cxxxvi.
The effect of the best sea-air upon modern iron in this country, would be that which the poet attributes to the worst in his southern seas. It is a different thing in the Mediterranean, and there is in Torzelo, an islet of the Adriatic, a church of the middle-ages, with stone window-shutters, hung upon iron pivots, which have undergone no oxidation. I do not know from personal observation, that the malaria produces the effect ascribed to it in the text; but think it highly probable, for there are some parts of Venice where plate tarnishes from the effect of the atmosphere; and this is considered by the inhabitants as a test of worse air than what prevails in places where it continues unsoiled. The partial prevalence of the malaria, which
