Statius mentions a Tempe, situated in Boeotia; and Ovid another in Sicily. The Tempe of Switzerland is a valley, lying in the bosom of the canton of Glarus3, near the mountains of Freyburgh, watered by the Linth. That of Italy, says Cicero, is the district of the Reatines. The most beautiful spot in Africa is said to be about a day's journey from the mouth of the Reiskamma; the most sublime is that seen from the mountain of Kaka. Vaillant, however, calls the canton of the twenty-four rivers the Tempe of Africa 5.

Humboldt is disposed to think, that the valley of Tacoronte, among the solitudes of Mount Teneriffe, is the most beautiful the world affords. But the vale of Cashmere would seem, by its associations, to have been even more beautiful than that. It was once the Tempe, the Elysium, the Paradise, of the East: since it was not only celebrated for its romantic scenery, but for the learning of its bramins; its plane trees and roses; and, above all, its beautiful women. In 1754 it fell under the authority of the Afghauns; and in 1782 the governor oppressed it with every species of atrocity.

In the vale of Tempe, Ford has laid the scene of a

Theb. i. 486.

4 Epist. ad Attic. lib. iv. 15.

"Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt."

5 Some prefer Elephanta Island; vid. among others, Captain Light'

Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Mount Libanus, &c. in 1814, p. 52.

"Its pictorial beauties are admirably described in a poem on the Restoration

of Learning in the East, by C. Grant, Esq. M. P.

contest, between a nightingale and a lutanist; finely imitated from a passage in Strada's Prolusions.

Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales,
Which poets of an elder time have feigned,
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting that paradise.

To Thessaly I came; and living private,
I day by day frequented silent groves,
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter'd me. I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention,
That art and nature ever were at strife at.

This contest was begun by a nightingale, who, chancing to hear a lutanist play several airs upon his lute, endeavoured to surpass them. In this attempt, however, the unfortunate bird failed: on which;

Down dropt she on the lute,

And broke her heart!

For Lover's Melancholy.

III.

In the vale of Tempe, Philip, king of Macedon, was cited to appear before the Romans, to answer for his conduct; and thither the Delphians sent a deputation every ninth year. This deputation consisted of the finest youths in their city. When they arrived in the valley, they erected an altar; offered sacrifices; cut some branches from the laurels which grew there; and carried them home, with a view of offering them in the Temple of Apollo, at Delphos. Julian, in a letter to Libanius, says, the beauties of this vale were second only to the groves of Daphne, near Antioch; and through its winding and

solitary defiles, Pompey proceeded after the battle of Pharsalia. Parched with thirst, he threw himself upon his face, and drank out of the stream. It is now a haunt for banditti !—and what a haunt!-a valley, lying in the bosom of mountains, shaded by the bay, the pomegranate, and the wild olive; the arbutus and the yellow jessamine; the wild vine; the evergreen oak; the oriental plane; and the turpentine tree; frequently festooned with various species of clematis.

The scene in England, which most resembles this celebrated vale, is the valley of Dovedale, in the county of Derby. This delightful spot wears an air of enchantment, which its transitions, caverns, rocks, and recesses, continually keep alive to the eye: while the imagination roves from scene to scene, and from transition to transition, with all the wild ardour of unsated curiosity.

In this dale are frequently seen virgin's threads, flying in the air, like small untwisted silk; and which, falling upon plants, open and discover a spider's web. This web is a delicate plexus, formed in the body of the spider, and which it is able to spin out of its bowels, at its own discretion. When the weather permits, the garden spider frequently darts out a thread, which flies before the wind to a considerable distance, still issuing from the bowels of the spider; which soon after leaps into the air, suspended by its own threads, and mounts with those threads flying before thus forming what are usually styled "Virgin's threads."

Who teaches the swallow, the woodcock, and the nightingale, to traverse the air from one climate to another, at different seasons of the year? Who directs the bee to return to its hive, from the distance of many miles,

when its eye can scarcely discern two inches before it? Who invites the salmon from the depths of the sea to climb rivers; and the herring and the pilchard to traverse vast regions, in order to deposit their spawn, in climates congenial to their natures? Who maps the winds? And who has pointed the magnet?—The same power, and the same intelligence, which has taught the worm to weave its silken net, and the spider to waft through the lower regions of air!

In England, few are the vales, remarkable for picturesque effect. They are rich in wood, in meadow, in animals, and in buildings; but they are destitute, for the most part, of rocks, ruins, and mountains. None of them, therefore, can compare with the vales of Clwyd, Llangollen, or Ffestiniog: and they possess little, which will enable them to stand in competition with those of the Usk, the Towy, or the Glamorgan. Of these, the Clwyd is the most rich; Llangollen the most picturesque; Ffestiniog the most abounding in beautiful and sublime combination; the Glamorgan the most rural; the Usk the most graceful; but the Towy, by far, the most adapted for a tranquil and elegant retirement.

IV.

In contemplating these vales, so beautiful and so peaceful, with what delight does the imagination rest upon the virtues of those monarchs, who esteem the arts of peace the most glorious of human occupations! Such were those, which adorned the last years of Augustus. Impossible is it to meditate on that era, without a satisfaction of the purest kind. Men, says Paterculus, could not ask of the gods, nor the imagination paint, a more perfect

The last Years of Augustus ;-Legislators. 203

felicity, than that, which reigned at that time; not only in Italy, but throughout the whole empire. Horace, like a medal, pictures both sides at once. "The ox wanders safe in the pastures; corn is allowed to ripen in the field; ships navigate the sea without danger of pirates; the laws are strictly observed; no seductions, no adulteries stain our families; good manners have succeeded to vice, rudeness, and impiety; and our matrons are even worthy the matrons of antiquity." A description, strikingly picturesque to the Romans themselves: for but a few years before, not a sheep, nor an ox, could graze in safety in their master's grounds; the man, who sowed, had little hopes of reaping; and the soldiery carried infamy or the sword into the bosom of almost every family.

Oh! ye rulers of the earth! will ye never discard those vulgar enjoyments, which the merest peasant enjoys with greater appetite than you? Will ye always waste, in the degraded rapture of a camp, those powers, which nature directs should be cultivated in the bosom of peace? Why will ye never emulate the virtues of those legislators, to whom every bosom erected a cenotaph ?-Bocchyris and Trismegistus, among the Egyptians; Zoroaster among the Bactrians; Saturn among the Latins; Minos among the Cretans; Philolaus among the Thebans; and Solon among the Athenians: Eudoxus among the Cnidians; Archytas among the Tarentines; Charondas among the Carthaginians; Phido among the Corinthians; Lycurgus among the Spartans; Numa among the Romans; and though last," not least," Alfred among the Saxons.

Not only legislators have been venerated by mankind, but royal inventors of useful arts. Pamphila, daughter 2 Montaigne.

B. iv. Od. 5.