It appears to me evident, that Homer means in this place to suppose a maritime route between Scheria and Eubœa, to the North of Thrace. He is not, we must remember, experimentally informed as to the position of Scheria itself, and probably he conceived it to lie quite outside the sphere of Greece, at a considerable distance to the northward. Though he brings Ulysses from thence to Ithaca in a day, this is effected by the privileged and miraculous rapidity of passage, which was the distinguishing gift of the Phæacians, as the kin of the Immortals. They are indeed in contact, according to the poem, with the habitable world, but they are strictly upon the outer line of it. They are of the race of Neptune: related to the Cyclops and the Giants: their ordinary life and their maritime routes could not, without doing utter violence to the conceptions of the Poet, be brought within the sphere of ordinary Greek experience. We cannot, therefore, be intended to suppose them to have carried the ancient Rhadamanthus past every known town, port, and point in Greece; past Ithaca, Dulichium, the Cephallenes, Pylus, and the rest. Nor would Eubœa, thus approached, be to Ulysses, who had himself visited Aulis on his way to Troy, a good type of remoteness: nor does it answer that description for the Phæacians themselves, if we consider it according to geographic prose; for though the way to it is long, it is not so distant in a direct line as other parts of Greece, Crete for example; and any people who had made a voyage to Eubœa by sea, round the peninsula, would know very well that the proper way to it was by land. We must, in short, presume such a position for the Scheria of Homer, as to imply a communication by sea between it and Eubœa, other than that through the known waters of Greece. But if we suppose a maritime passage from the Adriatic round Thrace to exist, then we keep the Phæacians entirely in their own element, as borderers between the world of Greek experience, and the world of fable. They still, when they carry Rhadamanthus, as in all other cases, hang upon the skirt, as it were, of actual humanity. And, thus viewed, Eubœa might fairly stand for a type of extreme remoteness. 3. Another passage of Homer, when understood according to its geographical bearings, appears to me, of itself, nearly conclusive upon this question. When Mercury is ordered to carry the message of the gods from Olympus to Calypso[579], his proceedings are carefully described. He equipped himself with his foot-wings (Od. v. 44), took in hand his wand (47), and got upon the wing (49). The next step in the narrative is, [579] Od. v. 43-58. Πιερίην δ’ ἐπιβὰς, ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ· (50.)