Of the Greek colonists of Asia the Ionians possessed the highest culture, and with them we find the first development of Greek poetry. Drawing from the common language a richer tone and a clearness and graphic power that their neighbors never equaled, they early unfolded the ancient legends and genealogies of the race into new and enlarged forms of poetical beauty. Says DR. C. C. FELTON,[Footnote: "Lectures on Ancient and Modern Greece," vol. i., p. 78.] "In Ionia the popular enthusiasm took a poetical turn, and the genius of that richly gifted race responded nobly to the call. The poets--singers as they were first called--found in the Orally transmitted ballads the richest mines of legendary lore, which they wrought into new forms of rhythmical beauty and splendor. Instead of short ballads, pieces of great length, with more fully developed characters and more of dramatic action, were required by a beauty loving and pleasure seeking race; and the leisure of peace and the demands of refined luxury furnished the occasion and the impelling motive to this more extended species of epic song." From the highly esteemed work of Dr. Felton we transcribe some observations on the beauties of the Ionian dialect, and on the poetical taste and ingenuity that finally developed the immortal epics of Homer: Ionian Language and Culture. "The Ionian dialect, remoulded from the Asiatic forms and elements which had traveled through the North and recrossed the Ægean Sea, under the happy influences of a serene and beautiful heaven, amid the most varied and lovely scenery in nature, by a people of manly vigor and exquisite mental and physical organization--of the keenest susceptibility to beauty of sound as well as of form, of the most vivid and creative imagination, combined with a childlike impulsiveness and simplicity--this Ionian language, so sprung and so nurtured, attained a descriptive force, a copiousness and harmony, which made it the most admirable instrument on which poet ever played. For every mood of mind, every shade of passion, every affection of the heart, every form and aspect of the outward world, it had its graphic phrase, its clear, appropriate, and rich expression. Its pictured words and sentences placed the things described, and thoughts that breathe, in living form before the reader's eye and mind. It was vivid, rich, melodious; in its general character strikingly concrete and objective; a charm to the ear, a delight to the imagination; copious and infinitely flexible; free and graceful in movement and structure, having at the beginning passed over the chords of the lyre, and been modulated by the living voice of the singer; obeying the impulse of thought and feeling, rather than the formal principles of grammar.