BENGAZI. 323 Thus we find these fairy spots successively retreating before the progress of discovery ; yet finding still, in the farthest advance which ancient knowledge ever made, some remoter extremity to which they can fly.

“ The first position of the Hesperian gardens” (continues our author) “ appears to have been at the western extremity of Libya, then the farthest boundary, upon that side, of ancient knowledge.

The spectacle which it often presented, a circuit of blooming verdure amid the desert, was calculated to make a powerful impression on Grecian fancy, and to suggest the idea of quite a terrestrial paradise.

It excited also the image of islands, which ever after adhered to these visionary creations. As the first spot became frequented, it was soon stripped of its fabled beauty. So pleasing an idea, however, was not to be easily relinquished. Another place was quickly found for it ; and every traveller, as he discovered a new portion of that fertile and beautiful coast, fondly imagined that he had at length arrived at the long-sought-for Islands of the Blest. At length, when the continent had been sought in vain, they were transferred to the ocean beyond, which the original idea of islands rendered an easy step.

Those of the Canaries having never been passed, nor even fully explored, continued always to be the Fortunate Islands, not from any peculiar fehcity of soil and climate, but merely because distance and imperfect knowledge left full scope to poetical fancy *. Hence we find Horace painting their felicity in the most glowing colours, and * Strabo, 1. — Plutarch in Sertorio — Herat. 4. od. 8. v. 27. Epod. 16. Pliny 6 — 6. C. 31-2.

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