ourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how
have so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of
men--thus vanish empires and nations?

And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean
on the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to
the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and
the commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so
depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded
with towns, villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated
fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have
flown those ages of life and abundance?--whither vanished those
brilliant creations of human industry? 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 sailors, of pilots, of merchants, and of soldiers? Where those
husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and all the creation of living beings
in which the face of the earth rejoiced? Alas! I have passed over this
desolate land! I have visited the palaces, once the scene of so much
splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and desolation. I sought the
ancient inhabitants and their works, and found nothing but a trace, like
the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand. The temples are fallen,
the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the cities destroyed; and
the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a place of sepulchres.
Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions? What causes have so
changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are so many cities
destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been reproduced and
perpetuated?

* According to Josephus and Strabo, there wer