vibratory motion was
felt: enormous chasms were opened, huge and heavy bodies were discharged
into the air, the sea alternately advanced and retreated beyond its
ordinary bounds, and a mountain was torn from Libanus, and cast into
the waves, where it protected, as a mole, the new harbor of Botrys
in Phnicia. The stroke that agitates an ant-hill may crush the
insect-myriads in the dust; yet truth must extort confession that man
has industriously labored for his own destruction. The institution of
great cities, which include a nation within the limits of a wall, almost
realizes the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one neck.
Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the
earthquake of Antioch, whose domestic multitudes were swelled by the
conflux of strangers to the festival of the Ascension. The loss of
Berytus was of smaller account, but of much greater value. That city,
on the coast of Phnicia, was illustrated by the study of the civil
law, which opened the surest road to wealth and dignity: the schools of
Berytus were filled with the rising spirits of the age, and many a youth
was lost in the earthquake, who might have lived to be the scourge or
the guardian of his country. In these disasters, the architect becomes
the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage, or the tent of an Arab, may
be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and the Peruvians had
reason to deride the folly of their Spanish conquerors, who with so
much cost and labor erected their own sepulchres. The rich marbles of a
patrician are dashed on his own head: a whole people is buried under the
ruins of public and private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled
and propagated by the innumerable fires which are necessary for the
subsistence and manufactures of a great city. Instead of the mutual
sympathy which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully
experience the vices and passions which are released from the fear
of punishment: the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice;
revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and the earth often
swallows the assassin, or the ravisher, in the consummation of their
crimes. Superstition involves the present danger with invisible terrors;
and if the image of death may sometimes be subservient to the virtue or
repentance of individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved
to expect the end of the world, or to deprecate with servil