Who bore the name Of Felix, and this man must be the same." 8 And straightway They brought forth to the light of day A volume old and brown, A huge tome, bound In brass and wild boar's hide, The names of all who had died In the convent since it was edified. And there they found, Just as the old monk said, That on a certain day and date, One hundred years before, Had gone forth from the convent gate Had entered that sacred door. He had been counted among the dead! That such had been the power Of that celestial and immortal song, A hundred years had passed, And had not seemed so long as a single hour! LONGFELLOW. WE 14. DESCRIPTION OF THE RUINS AT BALBEC. E rose with the sun, whose first rays struck on the temples of Balbec, and gave to those mysterious ruins that éclat which his brilliant light ever throws over scenes which it illuminates. Soon we arrived, on the northern side, at the foot of the gigantic walls which surround those beautiful remains. A clear stream, flowing over a bed of granite, murmured around the enormous blocks of stone, fallen from the top of the wall, which obstructed its course. Beautiful sculptures were half concealed in the limpid stream. We passed the rivulet by an arch formed by these fallen remains, and mounting a narrow breach, were soon lost in admiration of the scene which surrounded us. 2. At every step a fresh exclamation of surprise broke from our lips. Every one of the stones of which that wall was composed was from eight to ten feet in length, by five or six in breadth, and as much in height. They rest, without cement, one upon the other, and almost all bear the mark of Indian or Egyptian sculpture. At a single glance, you see that these enormous stones are not placed in their original site-that they are the precious remains of temples of still more remote antiquity, which were made use of to encircle this colony of Grecian and Roman citizens. 3. When we reached the summit of the breach, our eyes knew not to what object first to turn. On all sides were gates of marble, of prodigious height and magnitude; windows or niches, fringed with the richest friezes; fallen pieces of cornices, of entablatures, or capitals, thick as the dust beneath our feet; magnificent vaulted roofs above our heads; every where a chaos of confused beauty, the remains of which lay scattered about, or piled on each other in endless variety. So prodigious was the accumulation of architectural remains, that it defies all attempts at classification, or conjecture of the kind of buildings to which the greater part of them had belonged. 4. After passing through this scene of ruined magnificence, we reached an inner wall, which we also ascended; and from its summit the view of the interior was yet more splendid. Of much greater extent, far more richly decorated than the outer circle, it presented an immense platform, the level surface of which was frequently broken by the remains of still more elevated pavements, on which temples to the sun, tho object of adoration at Balbec, had been erected. All around that platform were a series of lesser temples, or chapels, dec orated with niches, admirably engraved, and loaded with sculptured ornaments, to a degree that appeared excessive to those who had seen the severe simplicity of the Parthenon or the Coliseum. 5. But how prodigious the accumulation of architectural riches in the middle of an Eastern desert! Combine in imag ination the temple of Jupiter Stator, and the Coliseum at Rome, of Jupiter Olympius, and the Acropolis at Athens, and you will yet fall short of that marvellous assemblage of admirable edifices and sculptures. Many of the temples rest on columns seventy feet in height, and seven feet in diameter, yet composed only of two or three blocks of stone, so perfectly joined together that to this day you can barely discern the lines of their junction. Silence is the only language which befits man when words are inadequate to convey his impressions. We remained mute with admiration, gazing on the eternal ruins. 6. The shades of night overtook us while we yet rested in amazement at the scene by which we were surrounded. One by one they enveloped the columns in their obscurity, and added a mystery the more to that magical and mysterious work of time and man. We appeared, as compared with the gigantic mass and long duration of these monuments, as the swallows which nestle a season in the crevices of the capitals, without knowing by whom, or for whom, they have been constructed. 7. The thoughts, the wishes, which moved these masses, are to us unknown. The dust of marble which we tread beneath our feet knows more of it than we; but it cannot tell us what it has seen; and in a few ages the generations which shall come in their turn to visit our monuments, will ask, in like manner, wherefore we have built and engraved. The works of man survive his thought. Movement is the law of the human mind; the definite is the dream of his pride and his ignorance. LAMARTINE. MORN 15. THE CONVICT SHIP. ORN on the waters! and purple and bright, Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail, And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale; 2. Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray, Oh! there are hearts that are breaking below! 3. Night on the waves !-and the moon is on high, Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain! 4. Who, as she smiles in the silvery light, Spreading her wings on the bosom of night, That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin, 5. Who, as he watches her silently gliding,— 6. "Tis thus with our life, while it passes along, As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; While the vessel drives on to that desolate shore, 16. MOUNTAINS. HANKS be to God for mountains! The variety which THA they impart to the glorious bosom of our planet were no small advantage; the beauty which they spread out to our vision in their woods and waters; their crags and slopes, their clouds and atmospheric hues, were a splendid gift; the sublimity which they pour into our deepest souls from their ma jestic aspects; the poetry which breathes from their streams, and dells, and airy heights, from the sweet abodes, the garbs and manners of their inhabitants, the songs and legends which have awoke in them, were a proud heritage to imagin |