And pass the prairie hawk that', poised on high', Of Texas', and have crisped the limpid brooks The HAND that built the firmament hath heaved, And smoothed, these verdant swells', and sown their slopes As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed In the dim forest', crowded with old oaks', Answer'. A race that long has passed away Heaped', with long toil, the earth', while yet the Greek Of symmetry', and rearing on its rock The glittering Parthenon'. These ample fields *A mountain in Attica, famous for its marble quarries. † A temple of Minerva at Athens. Two syllables, with the first long. From instruments of unremembered form', The red man came' The roaming hunter tribes', warlike and wild'- Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie wolf The wild beleaguers brokè,-and', one by one', The strong holds of the plain were forced', and heaped Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchers', Lurking in marsh and forest, till the scene Bitterer than death', yielded himself to die. Thus change the forms of being'; thus arise Twice twenty leagues Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp', Still this great solitude is quick with life. And birds that scarce have learned the fear of man', The bee' A more adventurous colonist than man', Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground dream'; LESSON CV. RUINS OF EPHESUS. WHO does not remember the tumults and confusion raised by Demetrius the silversmith', "lest the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised', and her magnificence be destroyed'?" and how the people', having caught "Caius and Aristarchus', Paul's companions in travel'," rushed with one accord into the theater, crying out', "great is Diana of the Ephesians' ?" My dear friend', I sat among the ruins of that theater'; the stillness of death was around mè; far as the eye could reach, not a living soul was to be seen save my two companions and a group of lazy Turks smoking at the coffee-house in Aysalook. A man of strong'imagination might almost go wild with the intensity of his own reflections'; and do not let it surprise you, that even one like mé, brought up among the technicalities of declarations and replications', rebutters and surrebutters', and in no wise given to the illusions of the senses, should find himself roused', and irresistibly hurried back to the time when the shapeless and confused mass around him formed one of the most magnificent cities in the world'; when a large and busy population was hurrying through its streets', intent upon the same pleasures and the same business that engage men now`; that he should, in imagination, see before him St. Paul preaching to the Ephesians', shaking their faith in the gods of their fathers', gods made with their own hands', together with the noise and confusion', and the people rushing tumultuously up the very steps where he sat`; that he should almost hear their cry ringing in his ears', “Great is Diana of the Ephesians';" and then that he should turn from this scene of former glory, and eternal ruin', to his own far-distant land'; a land that the wisest of the Ephesians never dreamed of'; where the wild man was striving with the wild beast', when the whole world rang with the greatness of the Ephesian namè; and which bids fair to be growing greater and greater', when the last vestige of Ephesus shall be gone', and its very site unknown. But where is the temple of the great Dianá, the temple two hundred and twenty years in building'; the temple of one hundred and twenty-seven columns', each column the gift of a king'? Can it be that the temple of the "Great goddess Diana'," that the ornament of Asia', the pride of Ephesus', and one of the seven wonders of the world', has gone, disappeared', and left not a trace behind'? As a traveler, I would fain be able to say that I have seen the ruins of this temple; but, unfortunately', I am obliged to limit myself by facts. Its site has, of course, engaged the attention of antiquaries. I am no skeptic in these matters', and am disposed to believe all that my cicerone* tells me. You remember the countryman who complained to his minister that he never gave him any Latin in his sermons'; and when the minister answered that he would not understand it', the countryman replied that * Sis-e-ro-ne; Guide. he paid for the best, and ought to have it. I am like that honest countryman'; but my cicerone understood himself better than the minister'; he knew that I paid him for the best'; he knew what was expected from him', and that his reputation was gone forever if, in such a place as Ephesus', he could not point out the ruins of the great temple of Diana. He accordingly had his' templé, which he stuck to with as much pertinacity as if he had built it himself`; but I am sorry to be obliged to say, in spite of his authority and my own wish to believe him', that the better opinion is, that now not a single stone is to be seen. plain', near the The sea, which Topographers have fixed the site on the gate of the city which opened to the sea. once almost washed the walls, has receded, or been driven back, for several miles. For many years a new soil has been accumulating', and all that stood on the plain, including so much of the remains of the temple as had not been plundered and carried away by different conquerors', is probably now buried many feet under its surface. It was dark when I returned to Aysalook. I had remarked, in passing, that several caravans had encamped there, and on my return found the camel-drivers assembled in the little coffee-house in which I was to pass the night. I soon saw that there were so many of us that we should make a tight fit in the sleeping part of the khan,* and immediately measured off space enough to fit my body', allowing turning and kicking room. I looked with great complacency upon the light slippers of the Turks', which they always throw off when they go to sleep', and made an ostentatious display of a pair of heavy iron-nailed boots'; and, in lying down, gave one or two preliminary thumps' to show them that I was restless in my movements', and that, if they came too near mé, these iron-nailed boots would be uncomfortable neighbors. And here I ought to have spent half the night in musing upon the strange concatenation of circumstances which had broken up a quiet practicing attorney', and sent him a straggler from a busy, money-getting land', to meditate among the ruins of ancient cities', and sleep pellmell with turbaned Turks. But I had no time for musing'; I was amazingly tired'; I looked at the group of Turks in one corner', and regretted that I could not talk with them'; thought of the • Pronounced kawn; here, a Turkish inn. |