A REMARKABLE PILLAR. 
103 
attention was arrested by a pillar composed of a single 
stone forty-six feet high and upwards of ten in cir- 
cumference at the base. It is said to have been 
much more lofty, a large portion of it having been 
struck down by lightning many years since, without 
shattering any part of the column below. The top of 
the shaft bears evident marks of severe injury, and 
the story has decidedly the voucher of strong ex- 
ternal evidences in favour of its truth. It certainly 
has the appearance of a broken column. The whole 
has a fine polish until within a few feet of the base, 
where the curious and the lovers of virtu have 
clipped it off ; the one to satisfy an idle curiosity in 
ascertaining if it were really stone, the other to add 
an item to his choice collection of extraordinary frag- 
ments. How often have the finest monuments of 
man’s mental and manual labour been thus dilapidated 
to make a valueless addition to a collection of lumber ! 
This remarkable pillar has been supposed by many 
to be nothing more than a composition which time 
has compacted into a mass so solid as to give it the 
appearance of a hard impenetrable granite ; but there 
are no just grounds for such a supposition, since the 
stratifications may be distinctly traced, and it has 
all the compactness of marble with a like capability 
of receiving the most exquisite polish. There are 
several inscriptions upon this pillar which it has 
baffled the ingenuity of the learned to decipher. They 
are perfectly legible, but the character is not recog- 
nized, so that the column must be of extreme an- 
tiquity. 
As the day was unusually hot, we were much gra- 
