[In the following excerpt from a letter, Shelley discusses in detail the ruins of Pompeii—an area that the editor notes "was powerfully suggestive of the Greek tradition "—describing it as a Romantic would describe a Greek city, observing, for example, the relationship between the ruins and the landscape.]

At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sate & pulled out our oranges & figs & bread & [?soil] apples (sorry fare you will say) & rested to eat. There was a magnificent spectacle. Above & between the multitudinous shafts of the [?sunshiny] columns, was seen the blue sea reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, & supporting as it were on its line the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, & tinged towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was one small green island. To the right was Capua, Inarime, Prochyta and Miseno. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke whose foamlike column was sometimes darted into the clear dark sky & fell in little streaks along the wind. Between Vesuvius & the nearer mountains, as thro a chasm was seen the main line of the loftiest Apennines to the east. The day was radiant & warm. Every now & then we heard the subterranean thunder of Vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake the very air & light of day which interpenetrated our frames with the sullen & tremendous sound. This scene was what the Greeks beheld. (Pompeii you know was a Greek city.) They lived in harmony with nature, & the interstices of their incomparable columns, were portals as it were to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was Athens? what scene was exhibited from its Acropolis? The Parthenon and the temples of Hercules & Theseus & the Winds? The islands of the Ægean Sea, the mountains of Argolis & the peaks of Pindus & Olympus, & the darkness of the Beotian forests interspersed? From the forum we went to another public place a triangular portico half inclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. .. . In the apex of the triangle stands an altar & a fountain; & before the altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico.—Returning hence & following the consular road we came to the eastern gate of the city. The walls are of enormous strength, & inclose a space of three miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding places for that which must decay as voluptuous chamber[s] for immortal spirits. They are of marble radiantly white, & two especially beautiful are loaded with exquisite bas reliefs. On the stucco wall which incloses them are little emblematic figures of a relief exceedingly low, of dead or dying animals & little winged genii, & female forms bending in groupes in some funeral office. The higher reliefs, represent one a nautical subject & the other a bacchanalian one. Within the cell, stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found within, which are now—as has been every thing moveable in Pompeii—been removed & scattered about in Royal Museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them on either side and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver & rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind as it were like the step of ghosts. The radiance & magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed their city. I have forgotten the Amphitheatre, which is of great magnitude, tho' much inferior to the Coliseum.—I now understand why the Greeks were such great Poets, & above all I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony the unity the perfection the uniform excellence of all their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theatres were all open to the mountains & the sky. Their columns that ideal type of a sacred forest with its roof of interwoven tracery admitted the light & wind, the odour & the freshness of the country penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; & the flying clouds the stars or the deep sky were seen above. O, but for that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the world, but for the Christian religion which put a finishing stroke to the antient system; but for those changes which conducted Athens to its ruin, to what an eminence might not humanity have arrived!