there; though he admits that the countries
lying under the Equinoctial line have in this
respect a very paradisiacal character. Touching
the fertility and exquisiteness of the Babylonian
land, he quotes a passage from Herodotus, who
says: "It is so fruitful in bringing forth corn
that it yieldeth two hundred-fold; the leaves of
wheat and barley being almost four fingers broad.
As for the height of millet and sesame, they are
even in length like unto trees; which although
I know to be true, yet I forbear to speak hereof,
well knowing that those things which are
reported of this fruitfulness will seem very
incredible to those which never were in the country
of Babylon. They have commonly in all the
country palm-trees growing of their own accord,
the most of them bearing fruit, out of which
they make both meats and wine and honey,
ordering them as the fig-trees."

Strabo wrote to a like effect, but these
ancient descriptions of Babylonia are no longer
applicable, the country being a parched and
sandy desert; but they admit of little doubt
as to what the land once was. The so-called
"island of Eden," one is led to believe, may,
perhaps, be a part of the district enclosed by
the two rivers, which, though not quite insulated,
is nearly so, and, indeed, is called by the Arabs
Al Jezirah, "the Island." At any rate, no
mention is made in modern Gazetteers of any
island in the Tigris called Eden; and one may
detect a certain similarity in the Arabic name
Al Jezirah to the Latinised term Gozoria, which,
according to Sir Walter Raleigh, was one of the
designations of the place alluded to by the
Nestorian Christians, and which he states signified
"'the Island,' by an eminency."

The idea of some species of earthly Paradise
remaining in remote regions of the globe, and
occasionally entered by fortunate mortals, is
common to most races; and it has given rise to
many very exquisite fictions. In Homer, we
find Ethiopia described as a vast island of the
Southern Ocean, the blissful abode of Neptune,
and of the most virtuous of mankind, whom
the God favours. By the Greeks and Romans
generally, the islands which we now call the
Canaries were regarded as the seats of the
blessed after death; which is a singular mingling
of the terrestrial and the celestial. The Roman
general, Sertorius, when in Spain, heard so
enchanting a description of these islands from
certain sailors who had just been navigating the
Atlantic, that he was greatly moved to abandon
the cares of state and the tumult of warfare,
and to pass the remainder of his life in the
Elysium of the Fortunate Isles—a desire which
we can hardly wonder at when we have read
Plutarch's account of them. "They have raine
there very seldom," writes the Cheronæan;
"howbeit a gentle wind commonly, that bloweth
in a little silver dew, which moistneth the earth
so finely that it maketh it fertile and lustie, not
only to bring forth all that is set or sown upon
it, but of itself, without man's hand, it beareth
so good fruit as sufficiently maintaineth the
inhabitants dwelling upon it, living idly, and
taking no paines. The weather is faire and
pleasant continually, and never hurteth the body,
the climate and seasons of the yeare are so
temperate, and the aire never extreme; because the
winds that blow upon that land from the other
side of the coast opposite to it, as the north and
easterly wind, coming from the maine, what with
their long coming, and then by dispersing
themselves into a wonderful large aire and great sea,
their strength is in a manner spent and gone
before their coming thither. And for the winds
that blow from the sea (as the south and
westerly), they sometimes bring little showers
with them, which commonly do but moist the
ground a little, and make the earth bring forth
all things very trimly: insomuch as the very
barbarous people themselves do faithfully believe
that these are the Elysian Fields, the abode of
blessed creatures, which Homer hath so much
spoken of." The Canaries have very much the
same character to this day, and offer a delicious
Paradise to any disappointed statesman or
battered soldier.

The Arabians have a legend of a gorgeous
paradisiacal city, built by a wicked king in the
south of their peninsula, and still remaining in
lonely and mysterious isolation in the midst of
the deserts of Aden—a story of which a metrical
version appeared in the first number of this
journal. The Persians imagined magnificent
cities and Elysian gardens, belonging to the
genii, on Mount Caucasus. The pagan
Scandinavians sang of their holy city of Asgard,
situated in the centre of the world, and abounding
in rugged splendour. The Hindu religion
shadows forth a Paradise on Mount Meru, on
the confines of Cashmere and Thibet; and in
the early Christian ages, the poets of the West
dreamt of a land in the East (the veritable
Paradise of Adam, as they supposed), in which they
conceived the Phoenix to have her residence.
Lactantius, a Latin Father of the Church, gives
a description of this realm in a poem, which
was paraphrased by one of our old Anglo-Saxon
poets; and Mr. Conybeare, in his Illustrations
of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, has produced some
specimens in modern English, which speak well for
the original; though the main ideas are
evidently derived from Homer's picture of the
Elysian Fields, in the Odyssey. A part of it
will remind the reader of Tennyson's noble
passage in Morte d' Arthur about the enchanted
isle of Avalon, to which the hero is taken after
being wounded in battle:

   Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
   Nor ever wind blows loudly: but it lies
   Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
   And bowery hollows.

Avalon is supposed by Mr. Keightly, in his
Fairy Mythology, to be the Island of the Blest
of Celtic popular belief. But we must not enter
the endless Paradises of modern poetry—the
Gardens of Armida and Bowers of Bliss—or we
shall never get back. For the same reason we
can only glance at the many local Paradises of
the ancients, such as Calypso's Island, and the
Gardens of the Hesperides, of Alcinous, and of