58 



works are swept away, as the leaves of the forest are dri- 

 ven before the chilling blasts of autumn. But the scenes 

 among which men labour and toil and struggle remain 

 with the same characters unchanged, which God impressed 

 upon them ; having all of perpetuity that earth can give ; 

 destined to witness other crises and other catastrophes in 

 the ever-passing drama of mortality ; and to furnish to 

 the end of time, silent but truthful monuments to the 

 facts of history. Races, institutions, religions and go- 

 vernments; arts, trades, associations, and dynasties fol- 

 low each other in mighty and varied series, sheltered be- 

 neath the shadows flung from the same mountain heights, 

 and mirrored in the same placid waters. The storied plain 

 of Marathon with its encircling hills, its meandering rivu- 

 let, its marsh — the grave of many a Persian horseman — its 

 beach, battered by the surges of the ^gean sea, continues 

 now, as on that memorable day, . when it was pressed by 

 the feet of the flying Mede, with skaftless quiver and bro- 

 ken bow, or trampled in hot haste by the furious and con- 

 quering Greek, with red, pursuing speer ! But the na- 

 tions, the ideas, the altars and the institutions of those who 

 contended there for victory, are dissolved as utterly, and 

 almost as long ago, as the bodies of the slain in the lonely 

 mound which yet marks the spot of their inhumation. — 

 The majestic summit of "high Olympus" still overlooks 

 the peaceful vale of Thessaly, with the same lofty and pure 

 eminence which commended it to heathen fancy as the 

 throne of the Gods ; as the council chamber where " Jove 

 convened the Senate of the skies," to decide the fate of na- 

 tions. But the divinities themselves, the intellectual crea- 

 tions of ancient poets ; the fair humanities of those old re- 

 ligions which the ingenuity of Statesmen invented, or em- 

 ployed, to effect political objects; the power, the beauty 

 and the majesty that had there their imagined haunt, on 

 its consecrated heights, have all vanished and live no Ion- 



