"It expressed the passions of robust manhood with artless and unconscious truth. Its freedom, its voluble minuteness of delineation, its rapid changes of construction, its breaks, pauses, significant and sudden transitions, its easy irregularities, exhibit the intellectual play of national youth; while in boldness and splendor it meets the demands of highest invention and the most majestic sweep of the imagination, and bears the impress of genius in the full strength of its maturity. Frederic Jacobs says, fancifully yet truly, that 'the language of Ionia resembles the smooth mirror of a broad and silent lake, from whose depth a serene sky, with its soft and sunny vault, and the varied nature along its smiling shores are reflected in transfigured beauty.' In Ionia, to borrow the expressions of the same eloquent writer, the mind of man 'enjoyed a life exempt from drudgery, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of sensibility and frolic joy, innocent curiosity and childlike faith. Surrendered to the outer world, and inclined to all that was attractive by novelty, beauty, and greatness, it was here that the people listened, with greatest eagerness, to the history of the men and heroes whose deeds, adventures, and wanderings filled a former age with their renown, and, when they were echoed in song, moved to ecstasy the breasts of the hearers. "The Ionians had from the beginning a superior natural endowment for literature and art; and when this most gifted race came into contact with the antique culture and boundless commercial wealth of Asia and Africa, the loveliest and most fragrant flowers of the intellect shot forth in every direction. Carrying with them the traditions of their race and the war-songs of their bards to the very scenes where the famous deeds of their forefathers had been performed, these local circumstances awakened a fresh interest in the old legends, and epic poetry took a new start, a bolder character, a loftier sweep, a wider range. A general expansion of the intellectual powers and the poetical spirit suddenly took place in the midst of the new prosperity and the unaccustomed luxuries of the East--in the midst of the gay and festive life which succeeded the ages of wandering, toil, hardship, and conflict, like the Sabbath repose following the weary warfare of the week. The loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores, and in the isles that crown the Ægean deep, was soon embellished by the genius of art. Stately processions, hymns chanted in honor of the gods, graceful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines, assemblies for festal or solemn purposes in the open air under the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and nobles--these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited here and now to enjoy.