Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/92

 have established their dominion, as if for ever! As to the wealth of the hills, it has slid down into the ravines:—wintry torrents, heavy with a booty wasted, have raged through the wadys, and have left despair to the starving few that wander upon the surface.

But now this Palestine—which five English counties, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, would more than cover—brings within its narrow limits more varieties of surface, and of aspect, and of temperature, and of produce, than elsewhere may be found in countries that have ten times its area. Palestine, in the age of its wealth, was a samplar of the world:—it was a museum country—many lands in one: the tread of the camel, in two or three hours, may now give the traveller a recollection of his own—come whence he may, from any country between the torrid zone and our northern latitudes. Not in England, not in Switzerland, nor in Greece—in no country known to us—may there be looked at, and experienced, so much of difference in all those external things of nature which affect the bodily sensations—the conditions of life, and in what quickens the imagination;—and all upon an area the whole of which may be seen from three of its elevations, or from four. Thus it was, therefore, that the Hebrew Poet found, always near at hand, those materials of his art which the poets of other lands had to seek for in distant travel. Imagery, gay or grave, was around him