Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/91

 that region which, by its elevation as well as by its latitude, should be temperate, there was a luxuriant growth on all sides in those times when the Hebrew Poetry breathed its first notes. In that age every slope was carefully terraced, and the viscid soil was husbanded:—every swell of the land gave delight to the eye in the weeks of spring, and of an early summer, in which it was laden with a double harvest. By the multitude of its springs, and the abundance of its rains—well conserved in tanks (such as the Pools of Solomon)—drought was seldom known, or was mitigated when it occurred; and a mantle of opulence clothed the country where now a stern desolation triumphs.

Still to be traced are the vestiges of the ancient wealth, the margin of the Dead Sea only excepted. Throughout Judea human industry reaped its reward; and in the south—as about Hebron, and in Galilee, and in Samaria, and in the plains of Jericho, and on the flanks of Lebanon, and round about Banias, and throughout the east country—the Hauran and Bashan—the fertility of the soil was as great as in any country known to us. An easy industry was enough to render a sensuous existence as pleasurable as the lot of man allows. In truth, within this circuit there were spots upon which, if only they were secure from the violence of their fellows, men might have ceased to sigh for a lost Paradise. But that Paradise was forfeited, as well as the first, and now a doleful monotony, and a deathlike silence