ugged country.

A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and
thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers meeting at an
angle; three prominent mountains commanding the plain,--Parnes,
Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not
always full;--such is about the report which the agent of a London
company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate
was mild, the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble;
more pasture than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient
certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines
once, but long since worked out; figs, fair; oil, first-rate; olives
in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down was, that
that olive-tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it
excited a religious veneration, and that it took so kindly to the
light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb
up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his
employer, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet
blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a
softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks
exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell how
that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale
olive, until the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like
the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian Hills. He would say nothing of the
thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would
hear nothing of the hum of its bees, nor take much account of the rare
flavor of its honey, since Sozo and Minorca were sufficient for the
English demand.

He would look over the AEgean from the height he had ascended; he would
follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the
Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when
they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto
across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any
admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down
below; nor of those graceful, fanlike jets of silver upon the rocks,
which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver
and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft
mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the
whole liquid plain; nor of the long