ere of
freedom, the heavens as free from cloud as the dwellings of the gods;
where the temples on the heights lift the glance upwards, and the sea
and the mountains expand vast horizons to the eye, rich in colour, in
thought, and in feeling; where all things are full of hope-awakening
life--antiquity, the present, and the future. Let him, beneath the
sacred colonnades on the hills, or in the shade of the classic groves in
the valleys, listen anew to the divine Plato, enjoy the grapes of the
vales of Athene, the figs from the native village of Socrates, honey
from the thyme-scented hills of Hymettus and Cithaeron, feed the glance
and the mind, the soul and the body, daily with that old, ever-young
beauty--that which was, and that which now springs up to new life, and
he will be restored to his usual vigour of health; or, dying, will thank
God that the earth can become a vestibule to the Father's home
above.'"[15]

"I shall soon leave Greece," she writes; but the charm of Hellas proved
too powerful for her, and she spent nearly a year in visiting its
memorable places. It was in the early days of August, 1859, that she
landed at Athens; in the early days of June, 1860, she arrived at
Venice. In the interval she had visited Nauplia, Argos, and Corinth; had
sailed amongst the beautiful islands of the blue AEgean; had wandered in
the classic vale of Eurotas, and amongst the ruins of Sparta; had
traversed Thessaly, and surveyed the famous Pass where Leonidas and his
warriors stood at bay against the hosts of Persia; had mused in the
oracular shades of Delphi and gazed at the haunted peak of Parnassus,
and looked upon all that remains of hundred-gated Thebes. It is
impossible for us to follow in all this extended circuit, and over
ground so rich in tradition and association. Wherever she went she
carried the great gift of a refined taste and a cultivated mind, so that
she was always in full accord with the scene, could appreciate its
character, and recall whatever was memorable about it. It is only thus
that travel can be made profitable, or that a genuine enjoyment can be
derived from it; just as it is only an harmonious nature that feels the
full charm of music.

There are delightful pages in Miss Bremer's "Greece and the Greeks";
the keen pleasure she felt in the classic and lovely scenes around her
she knows how to communicate to her readers; her literary skill puts
them before us in all their freshness of colour and puri