PTOLEMETA TO MERGE. 
389 
They welcomed us in the true patriarchal style, with an offer of 
shelter and refreshment, and we should have liked nothing better 
than spending a week or two among them, and rambling about the 
beautiful country which they occupied. 
It often happens, however, that pleasure and duty are disagreeably 
inconsistent with each other ; and the fine Arcadian lounge, that we 
should willingly here have indulged in, would not have much for- 
warded the objects of the mission*. The view which presented itself 
from the top of the hill was no less pleasing than those which we had 
enjoyed so much in ascending it. It had less of wildness than those 
of the ravine, but quite sufficient to give additional interest to the 
broad sweep of open country which lay stretched out before us, com- 
prising a rich and varied succession of hills and vallies which lost 
themselves in the blue horizon. 
The open tracts of pasture and cultivated land scattered over this 
charming scene were most agreeably diversified with clumps and 
thickets of trees, and with flowering shrubs and flowers, in greater 
profusion and variety than we had seen in our passage along the 
ravine. Everything around us was green and smiling ; and whether 
* It was to the rus in urbe that our destiny called us — to the ttoKIs ExXevfs- wxXaaov 
ovofj.a xai dsfA-wv — wv ’KSTins, xtxi xaT7i<p7)s-, xai iqetmov ! as Gyrene is pathetically 
described by Synesius; and we are sorry to say that the term rus in urbe may now be 
well applied to this once beautiful city with even more correctness than to Ptolemeta ; 
which we have already described as covered with vegetation, and presenting the appear- 
ance of a solitary grass-grown tract of country, rather than of a once populous town. 
Cattle feed evei-y where among the ruins of Gyrene, and its whole aspect is infinitely 
more rural than civic. 
