36.
The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil.
Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly increasing. [Vide supra, p. 151.]
37.
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow.
On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains, even in winter.
[This feature of Greek scenery, in spring, may, now and again, be witnessed in our own country in autumn—a blue lake, bordered with summer greenery in the foreground, with a rear-guard of "hills of snow" glittering in the October sunshine.]
38.
Save where some solitary column mourns
Above its prostrate brethren of the cave.
Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, formed by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of time.
[Mendeli is the ancient Pentelicus. "The white lines marking the projecting veins" of marble are visible from Athens (Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 129).]
39.
When Marathon became a magic word.
"Siste Viator—heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;[1]—what then must be our feelings
- ↑ [François Mercy de Lorraine, who fought against the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War, was mortally wounded at the battle of Nordlingen, August 3, 1645.]
