place, though probably new light will be thrown upon it by the pub--
lication of the papers of K. O. Müller, whose last days were spent
amongst its remains. If we put ourselves in the place of the Cretan
adventurers who, according to the legend, first brought Apollo's
worship to the spot, we cannot fail to be struck by the fitness of
the place to be the central scene of Greek religion, as Mycena
was to be the central scene of Greek tragedy. The sudden change
of
scenery, which strikes us the moment we turn from the bold
hills of the Corinthian gulf into the fantastic rocks which incrust
the shores of the bay of Crissa-the silent plain of Crissa, which
must be traversed before we scale the rocky barrier which closes
its northern end; the narrow pathway still worn by the ruts of
chariot-wheels, over which hang sepulchral recesses in the rock;
would raise expectations, which must have at once found their
natural satisfaction in the singular scene which suddenly opens
upon us in the basin of the Delphic valley. In the theatre-like
slope which descends from the foot of the two venerable limestone
cliffs, to the silver thread of the Plistus in the dark ravine below,
presenting a character at once perfectly distinct from the open
plain which we have just quitted, and from the savage desolation
of the mountains which we see beyond, it would be most in-
viting for primitive wanderers, with their minds open to the first
impressions of nature, to fix the home of their future worship.
Of its subsequent appearance, when the whole basin was one
mass of magnificent buildings, it is difficult to form a conception.
There is no modern city or sanctuary that we have seen or heard
of, that could exhibit such extreme splendour brought into so vivid
a contrast with such extreme wildness and seclusion of outward
scenery. And in the ancient world it must also have been un-
rivalled. How striking must have been the first burst of the
view on those who beheld it for the first time, may be gathered
from the graphic sketch of the repulse of the Persians, given by
Bishop Thirlwall, in his History of Greece, (11. 293) in which
we may perhaps be excused for observing, that the only expres-
sion which could by possibility jar with any impression derived
from the sight of the place itself, is that of "crag above crag,"
which seems to imply a more elaborate character of
is actually the case. Of all these splendid edifices not one column

scenery

5-2

than

is left standing.

It is now as striking in its desolation have been to those first pilgrims from its loneliness also the words of Milton give an impression of it not m than exact.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Rings through the arched roof with words deceiving
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

But the two cliffs of the overhanging steep, the c which issues from the huge cleft that divides them, the which the ancient city stood-are marked with the n clearness. From the substructions which still remain, of Ulrichs and Müller seem to have fixed-what was for a matter of doubt-the site of the great temple itself cular chasm is indeed yet undiscovered; and the app flicting accounts of ancient authors may, possibly, prev attaining such certain results from future excavations a otherwise anticipate. It is worth noticing, however, a coincidence, even if nothing more, that as on the ma Castalian spring there stands a plane-tree of great ag a trunk, but seen by Dodwell in full vigour and folia very spot where stood the plane, under which, accor legend, Latona deposited her twins, so the roots an a bay-tree were found by Dr. Ulrichs in the very 1 his discoveries led him to fix the sanctuary of the t where, therefore, the sacred bay-tree must have stood. of course, meant that these are the very trees of the old times; but when we consider the care with which th of the Erechtheum, the oak-tree of Dodona, the agn Samos, and the plane-tree at Caphyæ, (Paus. Arcad. continued for so many centuries, it is allowable to indu that trees so venerable, first from their associations, an their age, as these must always have been, may have preserved or propagated from generation to generati almost unconscious attention of the inhabitants. Nor, of future discoveries to be made in this quarter, are v that so remarkable an object, and one so easily identified

Es desolation as it must
loneliness: and here
of it not more poetical

As deceiving.

leaving.

ep, the clear stream
hem, the terraces on
ith the most perfect
I remain, the labours
t was for a long time
ple itself. The ora-
I the apparently con
bly, prevent us from
vations as we should
owever, as a singular
the margin of the
great age, now only
and foliage on the
h, according to the
roots and trunk of
very place where
of the temple, and
stood. It is not,
the oldest Grecian
hich the olive-tree

e agnuscastus at
Arcad. c. 23), were
to indulge a hope
ons, and then from
have been either
y
eneration, by the
Nor, in speaking
are we to forget
ntified when once

seen, as the Corycian cave was first made known by Mr. Raikes'
Remarks, in 1817. In itself, indeed, it is an instructive scene, both
historically and mythologically. For here, in the war of the Greek
revolution, part of the population of Delphi found a shelter from
the Turks, whilst part lay concealed a
the crags immediately

above the village; thus exactly repeating the history of their an

cestors at the time of the Persian invasion. Here, also, we see the most remarkable existing specimen of the Greek worship of Pan and the nymphs. If any one doubted the influence which natural objects had exercised over Greek religion, no more convincing answer could be given than by the sight of the fantastic white rocks and grotesque fir-trees on the approach to the cave-the wild and lonely character of the hills in which it is situated-and the stalactite figures, which, when dimly seen in the gloom of its long recesses, could hardly fail to suggest to the active imagination of Greek shepherds the vision of the mountain-god with his attendant nymphs and satyrs.

And what is true of the Corycian cave, applies more or less to all the similar sanctuaries in Greece. We are so much accustomed to the notion of Grecian temples full of air and light, that it is not till after a study of the natural features of the country that we become aware of the extent of that more simple and primeval worship which peopled almost every cave with some deity, every stalactite cave with Pan and nymphs. Of the latter kind, besides the Corycian cave, may be mentioned the remarkable cave in Mount Hymettus, containing the most complete traces of rustic paganism that exists in the world (Wordsworth's Athens and Attica, p. 193)-the cave at Marathon described by Pausanias (Attica, 32), but whose site has not yet been fixed with certainty by modern travellers-the cave of Pan under the north side of the Acropolis, dedicated to him on the occasion of his warning voice being heard by the messenger who went to summon the aid of Sparta against the Persians, (see Wordsworth's Athens, p. 81)— and the cave, on the banks of the Ilissus, which serves to identify the exact spot of the scene of the Phædrus. And of the more general kind are the remaining caves of the Acropolis, those of Apollo, Agraulos, Dionysus, and the Eleusinium, which perforate its rocks almost like a honeycomb-and the deep chasm in the

craggy sides of the Areopagus, dedicated to the Furi Edipus.

Whilst the intimate connexion of the Greeks with th of their immediate homes, illustrates their internal hi mythology, so their imperfect knowledge of all beyond no less their notions of foreign countries, and of their ow with them. In the great mountain-barriers which enclos of Charonea, the traveller sees that he has reached th boundary of civilized Greece: it is the last corner i the real life of the Greek race penetrated-all beyond and northward, was Greek indeed, but without the spirit And in like manner it is a very just observation of I worth, in the best part of his work on Greece, (p. 270 headland of Leucate formed from the earliest times demarcation between historical Greece and the regions logy and barbarism. The white waves which dash extremity of the promontory remind us of the terror "nautis formidatus Apollo" of the Actian bay always the navigators of the ancient world; and we can well co before the Corinthian colonists had penetrated to the isla all the regions behind that point would be almost as indistinct as that vast western ocean in which the p middle ages placed their earthly paradise, before Colu the spell for ever. We can fancy how they would fill the rich imagery of Phæacia-with the features of harbour, of a ship-like rock, and a vision of beautiful gardens, such as would be drawn from a hasty glance adventurous Greek sailors of the general beauty and more prominent points of the scenery of Corfu. times the same boundary more or less remained. I always the barrier which cut off civilized Greece from t Epirots, as it at this hour separates modern Greece fr and we know how even in the times of the Roman fantastic and sterile rocks of Paxos were associated w and striking legend, which we must again describe in Milton

The lonely mountains o'er

And the resounding shore

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament.

E

the Furies and to

is with the scenery nternal history and ll beyond illustrates their own relations

ich enclose the plain
reached the western
corner into which

1 beyond, westward
the spirit of Greece.
tion of Dr. Words
(p. 276) that the

t times the line of
e regions of mytho
ch dash against the
he terror which the

y always inspired to
n well conceive how,
o the islands beyond,

and
lmost as vague
ch the poets of the
ore Columbus broke
would fill them with
ures of a peaceful
beautiful woods and
y glance, caught by
and some

ty

fu.

of the

Even in later ned. Leucate was e from the barbarian reece from Albania; Roman empire the ciated with that wild ribe in the words of

ment.

Sicily in like manner affords a remarkable instance of the erection of a fabric of geographical mythology on imperfect glimpses of a distant and singular country, much in the same way as the facts in the early period of national existence form the basis of historical mythology. But in the former case the unchanging features of nature give us the key to decipher the legends that have been built upon them, whereas in the latter case the substratum has disappeared from our view, and left our knowledge of the early history in a state analogous to what our knowledge of the real geography of Sicily would be had the island been swallowed up by the sea, and our whole information concerning it been drawn from the Odyssey. Those who had past through the straits of Messina would bring back a report of the violent eddies which disturb the whole passage, and of the steep cliff overhanging the eastern side; and these would become fixed in the Greek imagination under the form of a raging whirlpool and of a hideous monster. The same tendency which led them to see satyrs in stalactites, and nereids in streams, would inevitably discern in the volcanic phenomena, which form the great characteristic of the eastern shore of Sicily, a land of giants-whether according to the later legends they imagined them to be pent up within the sides of Etna-or whether, according to the Homeric version of them, they imagined them running wild over the island-and heard in the thunders of the approaching eruption the voice of Polyphemus (modú¶nμos), and saw in the vast masses of lava, which are for ever rolling down into the sea, the rocks which the gigantic shepherd hurled at Ulysses, or at his rival Acis-the fitting symbol of the naturally fertile and pastoral plain which lies at the roots of the mountain. It was not till a later period, that increased familiarity with the island engendered the fable of Ceres and Proserpine; that Dorian colonists landing in the harbour of Syracuse dedicated to Artemis the fertile plain which, by its abundant game and rich vegetation, could awaken no other recollections than those of her Grecian sanctuary in Elis, the only similar portion of their native country, and by the same association of ideas were brought to discern in the spring of Arethusa the re-appearance of the river Alpheus, whose full volume of waters they had last seen discharged into the sea with a force so unusual in the streams of Greece, that they could