Returning out of the Peloponnesos by way of the Isthmos, and quitting at the Laconian rocks the territories of Corinth, we enter the Megaris,[189] originally, as I have before observed, a part of the Athenian territories. Attica is a triangular promontory, of small extent, projecting into the Myrtöan sea, between Argolis and Eubœa. A mountain chain, of no great elevation, forms, under several names, the boundary between this country and Bœotia; and Mount Kerata, in later times, divided it from Megaris. On every other side Attica is washed by the sea, which, together with nearly all the circumjacent islands, was, in antiquity, regarded as a part of its empire.[190] This minute division of Greece, fertile in nothing but great men, is seldom viewed with any eye to the picturesque. Satisfied that Athens stood there, we commonly ask no more. Genius has breathed over it a perfume sweeter than the thyme of its own hills,—has painted it with a beauty surpassing that of earth,—rendered its atmosphere redolent for ever of human greatness and human glory,—and cast so dazzling an illusion over its very dust and ruins, that they appear more beautiful than the richest scenes and most perfect structures of other lands. Footnote 189: Strab. ix. i. p. 232. Footnote 190: Strab. ix. 1. Philoch. Siebel. p. 28. Independently, however, of its historical importance, Attica is invested with numerous charms. Consisting of an endless succession of hill and dale,[191] with many small plains interspersed; and swelling towards its northern frontier into considerable mountains, it presents a miniature of the whole Hellenic land.[192] In antiquity its uplands and ravines and secluded hollows were clothed with wood,—oaks, white poplars, wild olive-trees, or melancholy pines. The arbutus, the agnus castus, wild pear, heath, lentisk, and other flowering shrubs decked its hill-sides and glens; on the brow of every eminence wild thyme, sweet marjoram, with many different kinds of odoriferous plants exhaled their fragrance beneath the foot;[193] while rills of the clearest and sweetest water in the world, leaped down the rocks, or conducted their sparkling currents through its romantic and richly cultivated valleys. Southward, among the mountains of scoriæ of the mining district, springs of silver[194] may be said to have usurped the place of fountains. The face of the country is nearly everywhere arid and barren,—the plains are parched,—the gullies encumbered with loose shingle,—the eminences unpicturesque and dreary; yet wherever vegetation takes place, the virtue of the Attic soil displays itself in the production of fragrant flowers, whence the bee extracts the most delicious honey in the world, superior in quality to that of Hybla or Hymettos. Footnote 191: Mardonius, in fact, found Attica too hilly for the operations of cavalry:—οὔτε ἱππασίμη ἡ χώρη ἦν ἡ Ἀττική.—Herod. ix. 13. Footnote 192: