A leap backwards of half this period
is what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and
picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval
battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's
horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
squire.
Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now
followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of
heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment
of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the
palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with
its aesthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to
generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of
contour and elevation of expression.
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