s brow, or a quivering smile upon his lips; then, this wiped
away, dream, sweat, smile--all is nothingness.

So the powerful cities of the ancient greatness of a giant age; their
very memory but a sad monument of the fragility of human things.

And yet, proud of the passing hour's bliss, men speak of the future, and
believe themselves insured against its vicissitudes!

And the spirit of history rolled on the misty shapes of the past before
the eyes of my soul. After those cities of old came the nations of old.
The Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the war-like Philistines, the commercial
republics of Phoenicia and the Persians, ruling from the Indus to the
Mediterranean, and Egypt becoming the centre of the universe, after
having been thousands of years ago the cradle of its civilization.

Where is the power, the splendour, and the glory of all those mighty
nations? All has vanished without other trace than such as the foot of
the wanderer leaves upon the dust.

And still men speak of the future with proud security!

And yet they know that Carthage is no more, though it ruled Spain, and
ruled Africa beyond the pillars of Hercules down to Cerne, an immense
territory, blessed with all the blessings of nature, which Hannon filled
with flourishing cities, of which now no trace remains.

And men speak of the future, though they know that such things as heroic
Greece once did exist, glorious in its very ruins, and a source of
everlasting inspiration in its immortal memory.

Men speak of the future, and still they can rehearse the powerful
colonies issued from Greece, and the empires their heroic sons have
founded. And they can mark out with a finger on the map, the
unparalleled conquests of Alexander; how he crossed victoriously that
desert whence Semiramis, out of a countless host, brought home but
twenty men; and Cyrus, out of a still larger number, only seven men. But
he (Alexander) went on in triumph, and conquered India up to the
Hydaspes as he conquered before Tyrus and Egypt, and secured with
prudence what he had conquered with indomitable energy.

And men speak of the future, though they know that such a thing did
exist as Rome, the Mistress of the World--Rome rising from atomic
smallness to immortal greatness, and to a grandeur absorbing the
world--Rome, now having all her citizens without, and now again having
all the world within her walls; and passing through all the vicissitudes
of gigantic rise, wavering declin