adens into lakes
with its more tranquil stream, and is so sluggish as almost to
forfeit the character of a river. The Iris, on the other hand,
flowing with a swifter course than any river I know, for a short
space billows along the adjacent rock, and then, plunging over
it, rolls into a deep whirlpool, affording a most delightful view
to me and to every spectator, and abundantly supplying the needs
of the inhabitants, for it nurtures an incredible number of
fishes in its eddies.

Why need I tell you of the sweet exhalations from the earth or
the breezes from the river? Other persons might admire the
multitude of the flowers, or of the lyric birds, but I have no
time to attend to them. But my highest eulogy of the spot is,
that, prolific as it is of all kinds of fruits from its happy
situation, it bears for me the sweetest of all fruits,
tranquillity; not only because it is free from the noises of
cities, but because it is not traversed by a single visitor
except the hunters, who occasionally join us. For, besides its
other advantages, it also produces animals--not bears and wolves,
like yours--heaven forbid! But it feeds herds of stags, and of
wild goats and hares, and creatures of that kind. Do you not then
observe what a narrow risk I ran, fool that I was, to change such
a spot for Tiberine, the depth of the habitable world? I am now
hastening to it, pardon me. For even Alcmaeon, when he discovered
the Echinades, no longer endured his wanderings.[3]

This highly-cultured prince of the Church clearly valued the place
quite as much for its repose, its idyllic solitude, for what we
moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugged at
once, as for its fertility and practical uses. But it is too much to
say, with Humboldt[4]:

In this simple description of scenery and forest life, feelings
are expressed which are more intimately in unison with those of
modern tunes, than anything which has been transmitted to us from
Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which
Basil withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy roof of
the forest below.... The poetic and mythical allusion at the
close of the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from
another and earlier world.

The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in
Imperial days, held the