might seem to throw some doubt on the sufficiency of the explanation, the answer was easy,--that in the progress of discovery man would, sooner or later, find out and enjoy every beauty that the hidden recesses of the earth have in store for him." Professor Colvin speaks with special admiration of Greek scenery:-- "In other climates, it is only in particular states of the weather that the remote ever seems so close, and then with an effect which is sharp and hard as well as clear; here the clearness is soft; nothing cuts or glitters, seen through that magic distance; the air has not only a new transparency so that you can see farther into it than elsewhere, but a new quality, like some crystal of an unknown water, so that to see into it is greater glory." Speaking of the ranges and promontories of sterile limestone, the same writer observes that their colours are as austere and delicate as the forms. "If here the scar of some old quarry throws a stain, or there the clinging of some thin leafage spreads a bloom, the stain is of precious gold, and the bloom of silver. Between the blue of the sky and the tenfold blue of the sea these bare ranges seem, beneath that daylight, to present a whole system of noble colour flung abroad over perfect forms. And wherever, in the general sterility, you find a little moderate verdure--a little moist grass, a cluster of cypresses--or whenever your eye lights upon the one wood of the district, the long olive grove of the Cephissus, you are struck with a sudden sense of richness, and feel as if the splendours of the tropics would be nothing to this." Most travellers have been fascinated by the beauty of night in the tropics. Our evenings no doubt are often delicious also, though the mild climate we enjoy is partly due to the sky being so often overcast. In parts of the tropics, however, the air is calm and cloudless throughout nearly the whole of the year. There is no dew, and the inhabitants sleep on the house-tops, in full view of the brightness of the stars and the beauty of the sky, which is almost indescribable. "Il faisait," says Bernardin de St. Pierre of such a scene, "une de ces nuits delicieuses, si communes entre les tropiques, et dont le plus abile pinceau ne rendrait pas le beaute. La lune paraissait au milieu du firmament, entouree d'un rideau de nuages, que ses rayons dissipaient par degres. Sa lumiere se repandait insensiblement sur les montagnes de l'ile et sur leurs pitons, qui brillaient d'un vert argente. Les vents retenaient leurs haleines. On entendait dans les bois, au fond des vallees, au haut des rochers, de petits cris, de doux murmures d'oiseaux, qui se caressaient dans leurs nids, rejouis par la clarte de la nuit et la tranquillite de l'air. Tous, jusqu'aux insectes, bruissaient sous l'herbe. Les etoiles etincelaient au ciel, et se reflechissaient au sein de la mer, qui repetait leurs images tremblantes."