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of power, and pride, and splendor. Now, as of old, it stands in a 

 sacred city, unchanged, while all around it is changed, the same 

 mysterious and impressive monument of man's greatness and 

 man's decay. No, not unchanged, for that dark obelisk of Egypt 

 has forgotten its ancient worship of the sun, has renounced its 

 allegiance to the departed gods of Rome, and now it points serene 

 and calm to heaven, lifting far up in the blue vaulted sky the 

 sacred symbol of the cross. 



AVe leave our homes and journey to Italy to study there the 

 lessons of history, of art, the wisdom and the beauty of a van- 

 ished age : but we have before us always, monuments more ancient, 

 more impressive, and more beautiful than Rome can show. The 

 humble grass which we trample daily under our feet can reveal a 

 history more ancient, and more strange, and secrets more marvel- 

 lous. That slender elastic stem, which waves so gracefully in 

 every breeze, which bends but breaks not even in the storm, is a 

 tower builded atom by atom, not of red granite, like the obelisk, 

 but of the purest emerald flint. Arch above arch, story above 

 story, it lifts its cells and chambers from the dark earth, storing 

 them as it rises, with its ripened sweetness. Winding channels, 

 too, are formed, through which throb and flow hidden currents, as 

 mysterious as our own vital blood ; but their secrets are as yet 

 undiscovered and unknown. The delicacy and the strength of 

 that astonishing masonry laugh at the poor imitations of human 

 skill. Is there an artisan so skilful who could build one of these 

 ■wonderful cells, or frame one of these perfect arches, a painter so 

 skilful, who on his pallet could mix and mingle the hues of that deli- 

 cate emerald ? The history of that structure is more ancient than 

 obelisk or pyramid, for it dates back to that wonderful, unimaginable 

 dawn, when God said — " Let the earth bring forth grass, and it was 

 so." It has had its journeys, too, and migrations. From those 

 pastoral plains of Central Asia, which were the ancient home of our 

 race, the grass has followed man all over the globe, at once the 

 pioneer and the proof of civilization — not as a monument of bar- 

 baric wars and triumphs, built only to decay, but of civilization, of 

 humanity, and of progress ; and the wild woods vanish before it, 

 and the dark morass is changed to verdure as it journeys on. 

 Like that obelisk of which I spoke, it was a worshipper of the sun, 

 but it has never forgotten its consecration, nor renounced its alio- 



