could no longer distinguish through the grey twilight any thing besides the shadowy and pale apparitions of walls and columns. The lonely solitude of the place, the peaceful serenity of the evening, and the majestic imagery of the scene, impressed my mind with religious contemplation. The view of an illustrious city deserted, the recollection of past times, the contrast with their present state, all conspired to elevate my heart with a series of sublime meditations. I sat down on the base of a broken column; and there resting my elbow on my knee, and supporting my head upon my hand, sometimes directing my eye towards the desert, sometimes fixing it on the ruins, I sunk insensibly into a profound reverie. CHAP. II. MEDITATIONS. HERE, said I in pensive soliloquy to myself, here an opulent city once flourished; this was the seat of a powerful empire. Yes, the interior mansions of these stately ruins, now so desert, a living multitude formerly animated, and a busy croud circulated in the streets which at present are so solitary. Within those walls, where a deadly and lonesome silence reigns, the noise of the arts and the shouts of joy and festivity continually resounded. These confused heaps of marble formed regular palaces, these fallen pillars were the ma jestic ornaments of temples, these antiquated and ruinous galleries are the mutilated vestiges of public places. There a numerous people assembled for the respectable performance of its religious worship, and for the feeling concerns of its bodily subsistence: there inventive industry, the fruitful source of enjoyments, solicited the riches of every climate; and the purple of Tyre was commercially exchanged for the precious thread of Serica; the soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous carpets of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the pewter of Thule.* And now what remains are there still subsisting of this opulent and powerful city, but a doleful skeleton! What evidence of its vast empire, but an obsolete and obscure remembrance! To the bustling throng which crowded under these porticos, a death-like solitude has succeeded. The silence of the tomb is substituted for the buz of public places of resort. The opulence of a commercial city is metamorphosed into hideous poverty. The palaces of kings are become the haunt and receptacle of deer; the threshold of temples is converted into a fold for the flocks; and unclean reptiles inhabit the sanctuaries of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory become eclipsed! How has so much art and workmanship become annihilated! Thus, thus perish the labours of men! Thus nations and empires transiently pass away! * See note (a) at the end of the volume. The history of times past strongly revived and crowded upon my thoughts. I called to mind those distant ages, when twenty celebrated nations inhabited the country around me. I pictured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean on those of the Euphrates, and the Persian whose pow er extended from the Indus to the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea; of Jerusalem and Samaria; and the warlike states of the Philistines; and the commercial republics of Phenicia. This very Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopulated, contained at that period, a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets (b). Every where one might have seen cultivated fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! what are become of those ages of abundance, vitality, and population? What are become of so many brilliant productions of the hand of man? Where are those ramparts of Nineveh, those walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those temples of Balbec and of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre, those dock-yards of Arad, those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude of mariners, pilots, merchants, and soldiers? Where those husbandmen, those harvests, those flocks and cattle, with all that creative race of living beings, in which the luxuriant surface of the earth seemed to pride itself? Alas! I have traversed this desolate country, I have visited the places, that were once the theatre of so much splendour, but I have met with nothing but desertion and solitude! I have looked for those ancient people and their masterly works, but all I have found is no more than a faint trace of them, analogous to that which the foot of a passenger leaves on the sand. The temples are overthrown, the palaces demolished, the ports filled up, the towns destroyed, and the earth, stript of inhabitants, resembles a dreary burying-place.-Great God! from whence proceed such destructive and melancholy revolutions? Whence comes it, that the fortune of these countries is so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed? And by what fatality is that pristine population prevented from being re-produced and perpetuated? Thus, absorbed in contemplation, an incessant torrent of new reflections poured in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, misleads my judgment, and agitates my heart with pain and uncertainty. When these countries enjoyed what constitutes the glory and felicity of mankind, they were an unbelieving people who inhabited them: it was the Phenician, offering human sacrifices to Moloch, who brought together within his walls the riches of every climate; it was the Chaldean, prostrating himself before a serpent*, who subjugated opulent cities, ravaged and laid waste the palaces of kings and the temples of the Gods; it was the Persian, the worshipper of fire, who collected tribute from a hundred nations; they were the inhabitants of this very city, adorers of the sun and stars, who erect* The Dragon Bel. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and physical powers of nature, . SECT. II. Second System: Worship of the stars, or Sabeism, SECT. III. Third System: Worship of symbols, or idolatry, SECT. IV. Fourth system: Worship of two prin ciples, or Dualism, Mystical or moral worship, or the sys tem of a future state, 197 201 205 218 223 |