a little nearer is the well-fortified City of LILEA, where the Boeotian-river Cephissus arises from the earth: the place is now known by the appropriate name of the MEGALAIS BRYSEIS, or GREAT SOURCES. From this point the river flows in an easterly direction through a beautiful valley covered with fields of corn and cotton. At a little distance from its left bank, on a declivity sloping to the river, is the village of LEFTA. The walls which crown the summit of this hill belonged to the citadel of ELATEA.

The position of this city gave it so much importance that, among the towns of Phocis, it yielded alone to Delphi in this respect. It commanded the passage from Thermopyla over the heights of Mount Cnemis into the Cephissian valley, and thence to the plains of Boeotia. It was the key of southern Greece. Hence arose the panic and consternation which, as we learn from the great Orator of the time, filled the city of Athens on the evening of the month of June, in the year B.c. 338, on which a messenger came to the Prytanes of that city with the news that Elatea had been taken by Philip of Macedon, who had marched by the passage above alluded to. The capture of this city was followed within a few months by the total defeat of the Athenians on the neighbouring plain of Charonea.

The river Cephissus flows by the city of Abae, which stands on its left bank. That place is now called Belisi, and was formerly famed for the sanctity of its oracle. The river there enters the lake, to which it gave the epithet Cephissian, at the foot of the lofty citadel of Orchomenus.

At the same distance from the Cephissus as the city of Abae, but on the right branch of the stream, and immediately below the point at which we now stand the eminence of Parnassus, and in an easterly direction from it, is the city of DAULIS. It still retains its ancient name.

Few of the cities of Greece can be compared with this place in the grandeur of their position, or in the extent and excellent preservation of their remains. The line of the ancient walls of the city can still be traced almost in their entire circuit along the crest of the rocky and isolated hill on which the ancient Daulians dwelt.

What remains of its history is as insignificant as these vestiges of its structure are remarkable. It has derived more renown from the mythological story of Procne, and has attracted more notice from the writers of antiquity on her account and on that of her sister Philomela, than by means of all the achievements in arts and arms of its former occupants. That

story itself is one of the indications which survive of the attention that was paid to the habits of animals even by the earliest and rudest inhabitants of Greece, and of the natural humanity of character which such an observation of their customs, and sympathy with their sufferings, may fairly be supposed to evince. To form the character of the naturalist the science of the augur no doubt contributed. Both are united with that of the inevntor and promoter of Greek civilization in the ideal person, as described by himself, in the Eschylean drama of Prometheus.

The road from Daulis, to the south-west, leads along a rugged valley to DELPHI, and falls in with another from AMBRYSSUS on the south, at a point half-way between the two. This place was called the SCHISTE HODOS, or the DIVIDED WAY; the TRIODOS, or the TRIPLE ROAD.

The rocky and uneven character of the soil over which these roads pass renders it a matter of surprise that they should have been traversed even by the light and small cars which served as conveyances to the ancient Greeks. While we have a proof that this was the case, in the fact that this route was no other than the SACRED WAY, which led a numerous retinue of spectators and worshippers, who flocked, at stated periods, to the games and religious solemnities of Delphi, we have an indication of its nature, and of the consequent difficulties by which a journey upon it was attended, in the story of Edipus, who encountered his father Laius in the Triple Way, as he himself was coming from Delphi. His unfortunate aggression upon him seems to have been the result of the narrowness and badness of the road. The tomb of Laius and of his attendant was seen by Pausanias on the spot where they both fell, which is now called ZYMENO.

Beneath us, on the south, is DELPHI. Its site has been well described as a natural Theatre, sloping in a semi-circular declivity from the foot of Parnassus. At the highest point of this theatre stood the Temple of Apollo. Its form may still be recognized on the coins and sculptured marbles which belong to the ancient history of Delphi. An interesting record of the ornaments with which it was decorated is preserved in the Ion of Euripides. On the place once occupied by its foundations not a vestige of its structure now remains. In its shrine was the elliptical stone which was regarded as the centre of the earth. Here was the oracular chasm, whence the prophetic vapour issued, which determined the destiny of kingdoms and of empires.

To the west of the Temple was the Stadium, of which the outline is still

visible. To the east of it was the glen through which fell a cascade fed by the snows of Parnassus, and which descended into a basin hewn in the rock, which was also supplied by a perennial stream of clear and salubrious water. This was the poetic fountain of CASTALIA. It still flows on, while the Temple of Apollo, and the Council Hall of the Amphictyons, the Treasurehouse of Croesus, and the three thousand statues which crowded the buildings and streets of Delphi even in the time of Pliny, have all vanished as though they had never been. The spring is now dedicated to St. John, in whose honour a small chapel has been erected over the source. It falls down the declivity on which Delphi stood, into the river Pleistus, which

flows along the valley at the foot of the city. It passes, in a westerly direction, through groves of olives, by the side of the Delphian Hippodrome,

and at the base of the lofty crags where the Crissa of Homer stood, which preserves, in its modern name of CRISSO, and in the huge polygonal walls of its Acropolis, the memorials of its ancient greatness. It then receives a tributary stream coming from the north, and flowing beneath the city of AMPHISSA. Their united waters glide together through a wide and beautiful plain, known and reverenced with a feeling of religious awe in ancient times as the hallowed Plain of CIRRHA, till they fall into the Gulf of CORINTH, in the CRISSEAN Bay, which is at the distance of five miles from the site of Delphi, of which city it was formerly the harbour.

Of the beauty of this scene, and of the peculiar features which distinguish it, no better or more accurate description can be given than that which is contained in the following lines of Milton, to whose imagination, when he composed them, a landscape presented itself similar to that which the traveller beholds from the ruins of the citadel of Crisso:

"It was a mountain at whose verdant feet

A spacious plain, outstretch'd in circuit wide,
Lay pleasant; from his side two rivers flow'd,

The one winding, the other straight, and left between
Fair champaign with less rivers intervein'd,
Then meeting, join'd their tribute to the sea.

Fertile of corn the glebe, of oil and wine;

With herds the pastures throng'd, with flocks the hills;
Huge cities, and high-tower'd, that well might seem
The seats of mightiest monarchs

MOUNT HELICON is to BOTIA what Parnassus is to Phocis. The principal cities of that country are grouped about its sides, as the Phocian towns are connected with those of their own mountain; and as the mountain of Phocis could show upon its summit the CORYCIAN CAVE, which was dedicated to the Parnassian nymphs, so upon the heights of the Boeotian hill were the favourite haunts of its own deities. Here flourished the grove of the Muses, whose statues stood beneath the shady recesses of these mountain glades; here flowed the sacred spring of Aganippe, round which the Muses danced; here was the clear source of Hippocrene, in which they bathed. The whole mountain was celebrated for its fresh rills, and cool groves, and flowery slopes; and while the legends connected with the other mountains of Greece were sometimes of a terrific and often of a stern and savage character, those which were produced, as it were, by the soil and scenery of HELICON,

24

LEBADEA AND TROPHONIUS.

partook of the softness and amenity which distinguish the natural character of the mountain from which they sprung. Helicon had no Edipus nor Pentheus.

It is remarkable that many of the names which characterize the natural objects of this mountain are of Macedonian origin. They afford historical evidence of the extraction of its ancient colonists. The regard which the early settlers upon the ridges of Helicon still cherished for the land from which they came, is expressed in the appellations of LIBETHRA, PIMPLEA, and PIERIDES, all which they brought with them from Macedonia, and transferred to analogous objects in their adopted country, when they had found, after their migration, a resting-place in the glens of Helicon.

The nearest city to the summit of Helicon, on the north of it, is LEBADEA. The stream which flows by the eastern foot of its Acropolis takes its rise in one of the dells of this mountain. It was called HERCYNA. Before it arrives at the city of Lebadea, it passes through a dark and rocky ravine, which seems to recommend itself by the gloominess of its groves, and the frowning heights of the crags which overshadow it, as a place