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W. F. Apthorp's disheartening dictum in "By the Way." "The entrancing phantasmagoria of picture and incident which we think we see rising from the billowing sea of music is in reality nothing more than an enchanting fata morgana, visible at no other angle than that of our own eye.
This romantic sheet of water is bounded on one side by a semi-circle of rugged mountains, and on the other by a flat morass, and the vapour generated in the mass, and broken by the mountains, continually represent the most fantastic objects; and often those on shore are transferred to the water, like the Fata Morgana.
And opposite to me, as I write, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea, streaked like a Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the white houses and walls, the steeple and towers, an enchanted Fata Morgana city, of dim Porto Venere; ... and I mumble to myself the verse of Catullus, but addressing a greater and more terrible goddess than he did:
Immediately after the central crisis of his personal life appeared the canvas entitled "Fata Morgana," illustrative of a knight in vain pursuit of a phantom maiden; and before long there was from his brush the pictured story of a lost love, "Orpheus and Eurydice," one of the saddest of all myths, but, one feels, no old myth to him.
The whole English fleet, consisting of nineteen sail, distant thirty miles from the point of observation, were seen up in the air, upside down, as if they had been hung up there by their keels. "The Fata Morgana is a sort of mirage seen in the Strait of Messina.
Infelix utcunque ferent ea fata minores. And it is a question which was treated also, as we all happen to know, in that other form of writing for which this author expresses so decided a preference, in which the art of the poet is brought in to enforce and impress the conclusion of the philosopher.
In later times the trees fell harmlessly under the axes of the villagers, and were very useful in building a house for their missionary. TUNA MA FATA The Eel and the Litter. There are two mountains at the west end of Upolu with a stream between them. On the one mountain Tuna lived, and on the other Fata. They were in the habit of meeting at the stream close by the habitat of a great eel.
'A little to the left of Sir Thomas are sitting on low stools his two daughters, Cecilia and Margaret. Next him is Cecilia, who has a boot in her lap, clasped. By her side sits her sister Margaret, who has likewise a book on her lap, but wide open, in which is written, L. An. Senecæ Oedipus Fata si liceat mihi fingere arbitrio meo, temperem zephyro levi.
Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea.
Some wretched hovels for the Dutch sailors, resembling great boxes, and after which the place was named, lay about in confused disorder on the opposite bank. "I either behold a fata morgana, or I am regularly tipsy," whimpered out the Councillor. "But what's this?" He turned round anew, firmly convinced that he was seriously ill.
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