n individual,
however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are passed over
with careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of
Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendor from seven
repeated misfortunes, was finally burnt by the Goths in their third
naval invasion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had
conspired to erect that sacred and magnificent structure. It was
supported by a hundred and twenty-seven marble columns of the Ionic
order. They were the gifts of devout monarchs, and each was sixty feet
high. The altar was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles,
who had, perhaps, selected from the favorite legends of the place the
birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo
after the slaughter of the Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus to the
vanquished Amazons. Yet the length of the temple of Ephesus was only
four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two thirds of the measure of
the church of St. Peter's at Rome. In the other dimensions, it was still
more inferior to that sublime production of modern architecture. The
spreading arms of a Christian cross require a much greater breadth than
the oblong temples of the Pagans; and the boldest artists of antiquity
would have been startled at the proposal of raising in the air a dome
of the size and proportions of the Pantheon. The temple of Diana was,
however, admired as one of the wonders of the world. Successive empires,
the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman, had revered its sanctity and
enriched its splendor. But the rude savages of the Baltic were destitute
of a taste for the elegant arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of
a foreign superstition.

Another circumstance is related of these invasions, which might deserve
our notice, were it not justly to be suspected as the fanciful conceit
of a recent sophist. We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths
had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire
to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs,
of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the
design; by the profound observation, that as long as the Greeks were
addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the
exercise of arms. The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of the fact
be admitted) reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and
powerful nations, genius of eve