We build in bottoms for warmth: and that site of Mitylene in the island of Lesbos, in the Aegean sea, which Vitruvius so much discommends, magnificently built with fair houses, sed imprudenter positam unadvisedly sited, because it lay along to the south, and when the south wind blew, the people were all sick, would make an excellent site in our northern climes.

The very metropolis of this lyric realm was Mitylene of Lesbos, where, amid the myrtle groves and temples, the sunlit silver of the fountains, the hyacinth gardens by a soft blue sea, Beauty and Love in their young warmth could fuse the most rigid forms to fluency.