appreciate, more vividly, the allusions we may hereafter
make to them.

The mere dry recital of geographical details, and topographical notices
is, however, of little interest in itself, and by itself. A tract of
country derives its chief interest from its historic _associations_--its
immediate relations to man. The events which have transpired therein,
the noble or ignoble deeds, the grand achievements, or the great
disasters of which it has been the theatre, these constitute the living
heart of its geography. Palestine has been rendered forever memorable,
not by any remarkable peculiarities in its climate or scenery, but by
the fact that it was the home of God's ancient people--the Hebrews and
still more, because the ardent imagination of the modern traveller still
sees upon its mountains and plains the lingering footprints of the Son
of God. And so Attica will always be regarded as a classic land, because
it was the theatre of the most illustrious period of ancient
history--_the period of youthful vigor in the life of humanity, when
viewed as a grand organic whole_.

Here on a narrow spot of less superficies than the little State of Rhode
Island there flourished a republic which, in the grandeur of her
military and naval achievements, at Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, and
Salamis, in the sublime creations of her painters, sculptors, and
architects, and the unrivalled productions of her poets, orators, and
philosophers, has left a lingering glory on the historic page, which
twenty centuries have not been able to eclipse or dim. The names of
Solon and Pericles; of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; of Isocrates and
Demosthenes; of Myron, Phidias, and Praxiteles; of Herodotus, Xenophon,
and Thucydides; of Sophocles and Euripides, have shed an undying lustre
on Athens and Attica.

How much of this universal renown, this imperishable glory attained by
the Athenian people, is to be ascribed to their geographical position
and surroundings, and to the elastic, bracing air, the enchanting
scenery, the glorious skies, which poured their daily inspiration on the
Athenian mind, is a problem we may scarcely hope to solve.

Of this, at least, we may be sure, that all these geographical and
cosmical conditions were ordained by God, and ordained, also, for some
noble and worthy end. That God, "the Father of all the families of the
earth," cared for the Athenian people as much as for Jewish and
Christian nations, we can not doubt.