High-eyried on the rocky eminence, where now the overthrown stones of a massy wall tell of cities and their dwellers, past like shadows down the dim vista of the gone, stood the fair town of Azimantium, with its long-disused battlements, its temples, and its columns, marked in fine lines of shadowy purple, high upon the broad expanse of the rich evening sky. The mountain on which it stood, clothed in the splendid robe of the setting day's calm violet-colour, hung over the valleys and the plains around, with an air of protecting majesty. On one side, a gentle slope, covered with green pastures, and clumps of high trees, with ever and anon a temple or a villa in their shade, declined softly towards the fair land of Greece--the country of poetry and song--to which Azimantium had long belonged. Two other sides, that towards the Euxine,[19] and that which looked over Thrace, were rough and steep, broken with gigantic crags; and though many a piece of smooth short turf intervened between the masses of cold gray stone--though many a tree waved its leafy arms, as if in sport, above each rugged cliff, and many a green parasite trailed its fantastic garlanding of verdure over the harsh and stony limbs of the mountain--no footing was there for things of mortal mould. The goat, the sure-footed goat, looked down, with sidelong glance, from the flat summit above, but tempted not the descent; the fox earthed himself at the foot; and but the eagle, of all living things, in his kingly loneliness, chose it for his dwelling, from its very solitude. The fourth side turned towards the barbarian enemies of the Grecian name, and frowned defiance in one savage, dark, unbroken precipice. --------------- [Footnote 19: See Procopius _de Edificiis_, lib. iv. cap. xi. Several reasons have induced me to place Azimantium on the very shores of the Euxine.] --------------- But now all was peace around. Splendour, and feasting, and music, reigned through the Grecian empire. The brow of every man was calm and joyful, the voice of every one was rich in poetry and song; and it would have seemed that nothing but a smile had ever curled the lip, or danced in the eye. O fatal softness! O hard lot of man! that peace can never rest without power! that enjoyment can never continue without strength! that the shield, and the glaive, and the javelin, should be the only safeguards of tranquillity!