Antiquities 



stater amid our sugar-canes would invest spade- 

 work with a new interest. And our gardens 

 lack that spice of immemorial antiquity which 

 is added in Italy by the presence of a broken 

 column, or a battered bust ; which even in 

 many English gardens proceeds from the 

 proximity of an ancient church, a fragment 

 of a city wall, or a castle shattered in the 

 civil wars. 



" I sometimes think that never blows so red 

 The Rose as were some buried Caesar bled ; 



That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 

 Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head." 



It seems an undoubted fact that previous to 

 the Portuguese colonization this island was un- 

 inhabited. No vestiges of any previous race, 

 civilized or uncivilized, have ever come to light. 

 It may have been visited by early explorers, 

 Phoenicians, or others ; more probably the 

 adventurous mariners who passed the pillars 

 of Hercules and turned their faces southwards 

 kept too close to the African coast to gain any 

 inkling of its existence. But even if it was 

 visited, it was not settled, and we are therefore 

 denied all the sentimental excitement and the 

 practical labour of searching for antiquities. 



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