RUINS. 301 



plating an object that is suggestive of its own dissolution. 

 This love of ruins ought rather to be considered as so 

 much evidence coming from them in favor of the infinite 

 duration of the universe. They are evidence of the great 

 age of the earth, and proof of its destination to exist 

 during countless ages of the future. I wonder that our 

 theologians have never deduced from this love of ruins, 

 which is so universal, an argument for the immortality of 

 the soul. It is evident that we do not instinctively regard 

 them as proofs of mortality ; but while we s*ee in them 

 the subjection of material forms to those changes which 

 belong to everything that is mortal, we look upon our 

 own souls as lifted above any liability to these changes. 

 Did we innately perceive in them proof that the mind 

 that constructed these wonderful works of art perished 

 with them, we should turn away from them with a deep 

 despondency, and endeavor to hide them from our sight. 

 By a similar course of reasoning we may account for 

 the pleasure which is experienced when musing among 

 the tombs. 



The scenes in our own land which are most nearly 

 allied to ruins are the ancient rocks that gird our shores 

 and give variety to our landscapes. They are, in fact, 

 the ruins of an ancient world, existing probably before 

 the human race had made their abode here. In these 

 rocks the frosts of thousands of winters, and the light- 

 nings of as many summers have made numerous fissures, 

 and split them asunder in many places. We find the 

 same species of saxatile and parasitic plants clustering 

 about them which are found amoiro: the ruins of art. The 

 forest-trees have inserted their roots into their crevii 

 and oaks that have stood for centuries nod their heads 

 over the brink of these precipices, and cast a gloomier 

 shade into the valleys below. Nothing can be more 

 affecting than some of these ruins of nature, that want 



