countries which bordered upon it in this direction were,
on the north Greece, and on the south, Egypt; the one in Europe, and the
other in Africa. The Greeks and the Egyptians were both wealthy and
powerful, and the countries which they respectively inhabited were
fertile and beautiful beyond expression, and yet in all their essential
features and characteristics they were extremely dissimilar. Egypt was a
long and narrow inland valley. Greece reposed, as it were, in the bosom
of the sea, consisting, as it did, of an endless number of islands,
promontories, peninsulas, and winding coasts, laved on every side by
the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Egypt was a plain, diversified
only by the varieties of vegetation, and by the towns and villages, and
the enormous monumental structures which had been erected by man. Greece
was a picturesque and ever-changing scene of mountains and valleys; of
precipitous cliffs, winding beaches, rocky capes, and lofty headlands.
The character and genius of the inhabitants of these two countries took
their cast, in each case, from the physical conformations of the soil.
The Egyptians were a quiet, gentle, and harmless race of tillers of the
ground. They spent their lives in pumping water from the river, in the
patient, persevering toil of sowing smooth and mellow fields, or in
reaping the waving grain. The Greeks drove flocks and herds up and down
the declivities of the mountains, or hunted wild beasts in forests and
fastnesses. They constructed galleys for navigating the seas; they
worked the mines and manufactured metals. They built bridges, citadels,
temples, and towns, and sculptured statuary from marble blocks which
they chiseled from the strata of the mountains. It is surprising what a
difference is made in the genius and character of man by elevations,
here and there, of a few thousand feet in the country where his genius
and character are formed.

The architectural wonders of Egypt and of Greece were as diverse from
each other as the natural features of the soil, and in each case the
structures were in keeping and in harmony with the character of the
landscape which they respectively adorned. The harmony was, however,
that of contrast, and not of correspondence. In Greece, where the
landscape itself was grand and sublime, the architect aimed only at
beauty. To have aimed at magnitude and grandeur in human structures
among the mountains, the cliffs, the cataracts, and the resounding