Wordsworth, Christopher: Greece, pictorial, descriptive and historical (London, 1853)

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LIMITS OF ATHENS. 191

the nearest to us, the last the most, distant from our present position. To-
ward the coast, and in the direction of these Ports, run two small streams,
both flowing from the north-east; the one on the south side of us, passing
us at a distance of half a mile, the other on the north, and at the distance of
two : they do not reach the shore, but are lost in the intermediate plain.
The former is the Ilissus, the latter the Cephisstjs, To the north of the
former, and at a mile's distance to the north-east of the Acropolis, is a rocky
conical hill, of considerable height, and one of the most striking features of
the scenery of Athens. This is Mount Lycabettus. Eegarding then the
hill of the Acropolis as the centre of the future city of Athens, we have, as
its natural frontiers to the north and south, two rivers, while on the east and
west it is bounded by hills; its limit on the east being the mountain of Lyca-
bettus, and on the west the lower range which consists of the Pnyx and the
Museum. Such is &■> brief sketch of the physical features which distinguish
the site of the Athenian City.

We now quit this period of remote antiquity, when the soil of the future
Athens was either untenanted, or occupied only by a few rude and irregular

ATHENS, FROM

uudmgs, and pass at once to the time when it had attained that splendour
wl»ch made it, in Literature and in Art, the Metropolitan City of the World.