60 PLAIN OF THEBES. 
CHAP, around the bases of the mountams, as if bringing- 
c ' ^' . the majesty of their celestial conductors towards 
the earth. Under the influence of so many 
sublime impressions, the human mind becomes 
gifted as by inspiration, and is by nature filled 
with poetical ideas. The Muses have ever made 
such scenes their favourite abode; and it is 
upon this account that they have haunted Helicon 
and Parnassus, and all the heights and the depths, 
the vales, and the rocks, and the woods, and 
the waters, of Greece : — nor can an example 
be adduced, where, in any country uniformly 
flat and monophanoas, like Sa/thia or Belgium, the 
fire of imasfination has ever kindled. If Greece 
derived her celebrity from an Orpheus and Pindar, 
and from the long list of poets it produced, those 
illustrious bards owed the bent of their genius 
to the scenes of nature wherein they were born 
and educated. Homer himself, had he been a 
native of oriental Tahtary, cradled and brought 
up under the impressions made by such scenery, 
and under the influence of such a climate, 
would never have been a poet. 
Journeying along the south-west side of this 
Th£bes. plain, the fine view of Thebes at last appeared, 
within two miles of us, upon an eminence near 
the mountains, to the left, interspersed with 
