There is something touching in the unconscious efforts of Nature to fill up the breaks and heal the rents which time and desolation have made in human work. If a gap occurs in the serried ranks of city buildings by sudden accident or natural decay, the site is forthwith concealed with hideous boarding; upon which, presently, staring portraits of latest clown or merriest mountebank mock as it were the ruin within, and advertise their idle mirth—an uglier fringe around the ugly stains of fire or the heaps of formless masonry. How different is the hand of Nature! Whether in the northern abbey or in the southern fane, no sooner are the monuments of human patience and human pride abandoned and forgotten, than Nature takes them into her gentle care, covers them with ivy, with lichen, and with moss, plants her shrubs about them, and sows them with countless flowers. And thus, when a later age repents the ingratitude of its forerunners, and turns with new piety to atone for generations of forgetfulness, Nature’s mantle has concealed from harm much that had else been destroyed, and covered the remainder with such beauty that we can hardly conceive these triumphs of human art more lovely in their old perfection than in their modern solitude and decay. The way from Andritzena to Megalopolis leads down from the rugged frontiers of Arcadia and Messene, till we reach the fine rolling plain which has Karytena at its northern, and Megalopolis near its southern, extremity. Our guides were in high spirits, and kept singing in turn a quaint love song, which, after the usual timeless flourishes and shakes at the opening, ended in the following phrase, which their constant repetition stamped upon my memory: [Illustration: Music]