And that Atlas, sustaining the heavens on his shoulders,[4] no less than Prometheus fixed upon the Caucasus, might convey in fables early and divine truths. This is a spot which has influenced the destinies and formed the character, not of one but of many people: it is the home of the fleeing Canaanite, the bourne of the wandering Arab; it was the limit of the ancient world. That world of mystery and of poetry, was not like ours. It was not crammed into a Gazetteer, nor were its laws a school-boy lesson learned by rote. These Straits,[5] then the peculiar domain of mythology, were approached with natural wonder and religious awe. The doubtful inquirer came hither to see if the sky met and rested upon the earth--if Atlas did indeed bear a starry burden--to discover what the world was--whether an interminable plain, or a ball launched in space or floating on the water--whether the ocean was a portion of it or supported it--whether beyond the “Pillars”[6] was the origin of present things, or the receptacle of departed ones--whether the road lay to Chaos or to Hades. And something, too, of these feelings crept over me, even although I came hither merely to ruminate on the past deeds of men, the shadows of which I looked for on the face of that watery mirror, which was the centre of their solid globe--the resolver, the adjuster of all their contests. The Mediterranean has made the world such as it is. Ancient history has been balanced on its bosom; and without the passage connecting it with the ocean, none of the events of recent history could have happened. To the dwellers on the skirt of Palestine she was a handmaid for a thousand years, affording a liquid way for the wares which they scattered over half the globe: From her bosom rose on all sides those sea-kings of the south, the Pelasgi. She bore the Etruscans to their Ausonian homes. She furnished to the African daughter of Tyre the elements of the power by which she was enabled to compete for the dominion of the world. Transferred by the struggle of a few hours, and by the sinking of a few craft--she carried with her that dominion to Rome, and fixed it there for centuries. When the course of that Empire was run, and barbarism had spread over the land, she fitted up new and beautiful things upon her shores; nurtured Amalphi and Venice and Pisa, and built up Genoa and Barcelona. Then opened a new order. Seamanship, by magnetic touch endowed with wings, dared to lose sight of earth: issuing from these portals, it gave to the princes of the Peninsula the knowledge of a new world, and the title of lords of the eastern and western hemispheres.