re is simply
an enumeration of features which a commercial agent might see; the
rest is what the artistic soul of the lover of beauty saw there. One
is enumeration; the other a gloriously suggestive picture.

"A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest
length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky
barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains,
commanding the plain,--Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an
unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not always full;--such is
about the report which the agent of a London company would
have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was
mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good
marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have
been expected, sufficient, certainly, for sheep and goats;
fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since
worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion.
But what he would not think of noting down was that that
olive-tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape
that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so
kindly to the light soil as to expand into woods upon the
open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would
not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear
air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and
subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness
and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture
looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He
would not tell how that same delicate and brilliant
atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive
forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus
or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the
thyme and the thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted
Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor
take account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gaza and
Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would
look over the Aegean from the height he had ascended; he
would follow with his eyes the chain of islands, which,
starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the
fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their
Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea;
but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any adm