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GEOGKAPHICAL VIEW OF GREECE. 19shares the immortality of Ulysses and Homer. Cythera, inthe south, was the residence of the Paphian goddess. J3gina,unimportant as it seems, long disputed with Athens thesovereignty of the sea. What Greek could hear Salamisnamed, without feeling a superiority over the barbarians ?Euboea was celebrated for its fruitfulness ; Thasos, for itsgold mines; Samothrace, for its mysteries; and in the labyrinth of the Cyclades and Sporades, now called the Archipelago,what island had not afforded thepoets the subject of a hymn? * Delos and Naxus had their gods Paros,;itsmarble; Melos, its misfortunes. 2 If so many of them arenow desolate ;if the alluring Cythera lias become a nakedrock ;if Samos is poisoned by its swamps ;if nature herselfseems hei*e to have grown old; shall we conclude that thesethings were so in ancient times ? The Etesian winds blowcertainly with more piercing roughness, now that the topsof the mountains are naked; the brooks stagnatein thedesolate plains; but the change of seasons still producesvarying visions; and the traveller, who at one time finds theArchipelago melancholy and waste, a few months later maycontemplate a "smiling prospect. In spring, these islandsare covered with greenturf* with anemones and flowers ofall colours. But in the month of August, when the northerly winds prevail, every thing is burnt and dried up, andthe parched fields produce no more 3tillherbage autumn."This view of Greece, thoughit cannot claim to be considered a regular description, leads us to severalwhich remarks,may perhaps throw some lighton the history of thenation.First : Greece was naturally so divided and cut in piecesin a geographical point of view, that it could not have beeneasy for any one district to gain the supremacy over the rest.Thessaly could not well control the lands which lay to thesouth of (Eta; and still less could Hellas sway the Peloponnesus, or the Peloponnesus, Hellas. Nature herself had erected breastworks for those, who desired and who knew how to1Need we mention the hymns of CalHmachus P2See Thucydidcs, v. 1 16."Bartholdy, Bruchstiicke, etc,, p. 194 The whole description of theArchipelago, by this traveller, should be consulted.