238 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
unless the style of paving was a good deal better than any 
thing done throughout the East in modern times, of which 
there is no evidence in the specimens that remain. 
In sober truth, the more I thought about Baalbek as it 
was, the more I became impressed with the idea that we are 
apt to magnify the grandeur of every thing ancient, and en¬ 
courage false impressions by feeding the mind with the poetry 
of the past. There was as much reality then as there is at 
present; men were human and all their works were human; 
and the ruins of those works derive much of their effect from 
the lapse of time. To an imaginative mind a broken column 
is more beautiful covered with the mould of ages, than one 
of precisely the same form, new and complete. There must 
have been a time when those works were new, and when 
contemporary architects and critics held the same opinion of 
them, compared with something more antique, as we do now 
of what is done in our day, compared with what was done 
then. The enchantment that distance lends is lent to all 
these temples and relics of ancient grandeur with a most 
liberal hand. I saw in Jerusalem a picture of Baalbek re¬ 
built as it originally stood, beautifully drawn by a competent 
artist; and, comparing it with drawings of the ruins, I must 
say that Baalbek in ruins, with a little room for the imagina¬ 
tion, is much grander and more imposing than Baalbek, com¬ 
plete as it existed in ages past, with nothing beyond mere 
reality to look to. 
But it will not do to indulge in this train of thought. Strip 
the past of all its romance, and there is little left to write 
about. What reader will be satisfied with plain facts ? what 
reader will be satisfied with the simple unadorned truth— 
except the few that I hope to honor me with a perusal of 
these pages ? and it is only to that rare but enlightened class 
that I dare to address such unpopular views. 
In my rambles about the village of Baalbek I was struck 
with the beauty of the children, and the extreme youthfulness 
of some of the Arab mothers. I saw several young females, 
not more than twelve or fourteen years of age, with babies in 
their arms, evidently their own; and I was told that this is 
