PHYSICAL DECAY OF ROMAN PROVINCES. 
3 
make provision. Indeed, tlie very commonness of this source 
of refined enjoyment seems to have deprived it of half its 
value; and it was only in the infancy of lands where all the 
earth was fair, that Greek and Roman humanity had sym¬ 
pathy enough with the inanimate world to he alive to the 
charms of rural and of mountain scenery. In later genera¬ 
tions, when the glories of the landscape had been heightened 
by plantation, and decorative architecture, and other forms of 
picturesque improvement, the poets of Greece and Rome were 
blinded by excess of light, and became, at last, almost insensi¬ 
ble to beauties that now, even in their degraded state, enchant 
every eye, except, too often, those which a lifelong familiarity 
has dulled to their attractions. 
Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire , and 
of other parts of the Old World. 
If we compare the present physical condition of the coun¬ 
tries of which I am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient 
historians and geographers have given of their fertility and 
general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find 
that more than one half of their whole extent—including the 
provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of 
their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the 
wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants—is either 
deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desola¬ 
tion, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and 
population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain 
spurs and ridges ; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the 
trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the 
alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the 
mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once 
fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive, because 
the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are 
broken, or the springs that fed them dried up ; rivers famous 
in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the 
willows that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser 
