a, the fields
were dotted, far and near, with the white Easter shirts of the people
working among the vines. Another hour, and our horses' hoofs were upon
the sacred soil of Plataea. The walls of the city are still to be traced
for nearly their entire extent. They are precisely similar in
construction to those of OEnoe--like which, also, they were
strengthened by square towers. There are the substructions of various
edifices--some of which may have been temples--and on the side next the
modern village lie four large sarcophagi, now used as vats for treading
out the grapes in vintage-time. A more harmless blood than once curdled
on the stones of Plataea now stains the empty sepulchers of the heroes.
We rode over the plain, fixt the features of the scene in our memories,
and then kept on toward the field of Leuktra, where the brutal power of
Sparta received its first check. The two fields are so near, that a part
of the fighting may have been done upon the same ground....

I then turned my horse's head toward Thebes, which we reached in two
hours. It was a pleasant scene, tho so different from that of two
thousand years ago. The town is built partly on the hill of the
Cadmeion, and partly on the plain below. An aqueduct, on mossy arches,
supplies it with water, and keeps its gardens green. The plain to the
north is itself one broad garden to the foot of the hill of the Sphinx,
beyond which is the blue gleam of a lake, then a chain of barren hills,
and over all the snowy cone of Mount Delphi, in Euboea. The only
remains of the ancient city are stones; for the massive square tower,
now used as a prison, can not be ascribed to an earlier date than the
reign of the Latin princes....

The next morning we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took the highway to
Livadia, leading straight across the Boeotian plain. It is one of the
finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark, vegetable
mold--which would produce almost without limit, were it properly
cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay
Parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of Mount
Oeta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, and looked up at
the streaks of snow which melt into the Fountain of the Muses....

As we left Arachova, proceeding toward Delphi, the deep gorge opened,
disclosing a blue glimpse of the Gulf of Corinth and the Achaian
mountains. Tremendous cliffs of blue-gray limestone towered upon our
right,