PTOLEMETA TO MERGE.

389 They welcomed us in the true patriarchal style, with an offer of shelter and refreshment, and we should have liked nothing better than spending a week or two among them, and rambling about the beautiful country which they occupied.

It often happens, however, that pleasure and duty are disagreeably inconsistent with each other ; and the fine Arcadian lounge, that we should willingly here have indulged in, would not have much forwarded the objects of the mission*. The view which presented itself from the top of the hill was no less pleasing than those which we had enjoyed so much in ascending it. It had less of wildness than those of the ravine, but quite sufficient to give additional interest to the broad sweep of open country which lay stretched out before us, comprising a rich and varied succession of hills and vallies which lost themselves in the blue horizon.

The open tracts of pasture and cultivated land scattered over this charming scene were most agreeably diversified with clumps and thickets of trees, and with flowering shrubs and flowers, in greater profusion and variety than we had seen in our passage along the ravine. Everything around us was green and smiling ; and whether * It was to the rus in urbe that our destiny called us — to the ttoKIs ExXevfs- wxXaaov ovofj.a xai dsfA-wv — wv ’KSTins, xtxi xaT7i<p7)s-, xai iqetmov ! as Gyrene is pathetically described by Synesius; and we are sorry to say that the term rus in urbe may now be well applied to this once beautiful city with even more correctness than to Ptolemeta ; which we have already described as covered with vegetation, and presenting the appearance of a solitary grass-grown tract of country, rather than of a once populous town.

Cattle feed evei-y where among the ruins of Gyrene, and its whole aspect is infinitely more rural than civic.