lauds, Elian admires, upon the river Pineus: in
those Thessalian fields, beset with green bays, where birds so sweetly sing
that passengers, enchanted as it were with their heavenly music, _omnium
laborum et curarum obliviscantur_, forget forthwith all labours, care, and
grief: or in a gondola through the Grand Canal in Venice, to see those
goodly palaces, must needs refresh and give content to a melancholy dull
spirit. Or to see the inner rooms of a fair-built and sumptuous edifice, as
that of the Persian kings, so much renowned by Diodorus and Curtius, in
which all was almost beaten gold, [3253]chairs, stools, thrones,
tabernacles, and pillars of gold, plane trees, and vines of gold, grapes of
precious stones, all the other ornaments of pure gold,

[3254] "Fulget gemma floris, et jaspide fulva supellex,
Strata micant Tyrio"------

With sweet odours and perfumes, generous wines, opiparous fare, &c.,
besides the gallantest young men, the fairest [3255]virgins, _puellae
scitulae ministrantes_, the rarest beauties the world could afford, and
those set out with costly and curious attires, _ad stuporem usque
spectantium_, with exquisite music, as in [3256]Trimaltion's house, in
every chamber sweet voices ever sounding day and night, _incomparabilis
luxus_, all delights and pleasures in each kind which to please the senses
could possibly be devised or had, _convives coronati, delitiis ebrii_, &c.
Telemachus, in Homer, is brought in as one ravished almost at the sight of
that magnificent palace, and rich furniture of Menelaus, when he beheld

[3257] "Aeris fulgorem et resonantia tecta corusco
Auro, atque electro nitido, sectoque elephanto,
Argentoque simul. Talis Jovis ardua sedes,
Aulaque coelicolum stellans splendescit Olympo."

"Such glittering of gold and brightest brass to shine,
Clear amber, silver pure, and ivory so fine:
Jupiter's lofty palace, where the gods do dwell,
Was even such a one, and did it not excel."

It will _laxare animos_, refresh the soul of man to see fair-built cities,
streets, theatres, temples, obelisks, &c. The temple of Jerusalem was so
fairly built of white marble, with so many pyramids covered with gold;
_tectumque templi fulvo coruscans auro, nimio suo fulgore obcaecabat oculos
itinerantium_, was so glorious, and so glistened afar off, that the
spectators might not well abide the sight of it. But the inner parts were
all so cu