THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 241 



this region. Sicily, the first and fairest of these isles, offers 

 equal and endless interest to the naturalist and historian, the 

 artist and the poet, despite those centuries of misgovernment 

 which have passed over it. We may affirm with safety that 

 no equal surface on the globe concentrates so many objects 

 fitted to delight the eye and the imagination. Sardinia, 

 Corsica, Candia, and Cyprus abound in magnificent though 

 less accessible scenery. Corsica indeed may now be tra- 

 versed (and well merits to be so), without other fear than of 

 bad lodgings and scanty food. The traveller of this day, for- 

 getting the petulant epigrams of Seneca, may as little heed 

 the savage stories of the vendetta which still linger in its 

 mountains, forests, and wild villages. Sardinia, with equal 

 natural attractions and once counted among the granaries of 

 Eome, offers far less facility and safety to the modern tourist ; 

 but its political connection with the freest and most flourish- 

 ing of the Italian States, gives happier augury for the future. 

 Candia and Cyprus, scantily known to us notwithstanding 

 their ancient fame, are awaiting the changes now at work in 

 every part of the Turkish Empire ; which changes will alike 

 affect the islands crowding the Archipelago and rendering it 

 one of the most remarkable gulfs in the world. Amidst this 

 labyrinth of mountain isles and lofty coasts, rich in historical 

 recollections of every age, lies the passage towards those inner 

 seas, where early history and fable are blended together in 

 that vague mystery which has its charm even for those who 

 are labouring after truth and reality. In this great gulf of 

 the Archipelago, moreover, Grecian poetry found the ma- 

 terial for some of its finest descriptions. No one can have 

 made a winter voyage through its isles, without recalling 

 those passages among the grandest of Homer's similes, and 

 apparently the most familiar to his imagination where the 

 rude rock and promontory (the a/crr) v-fyrjKrj at every moment 

 present to the eye) are pictured as beaten upon by the winds 



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