S96 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
I sat upon a broken column, and looking with a saddened 
heart upon this scene of desolation, wondered what had be¬ 
come of all that had lived here; the good, the wicked—the 
brave, the beautiful, and the gay; how lived they; how died 
they; were all the records of their deeds for centuries past 
buried with them, and nothing left ; was there happiness 
within these walls ; did they feel as we who looked upon 
these ruins felt; did they look back over the past and for¬ 
ward to the future, and in their ambition encircle the wide 
world, and turn to dust at last to feed the worms of the earth 
and nourish the weeds; and was this mass of mins all they 
had left to mark the spot ? 
There was not a breath to answer; not a leaf to whisper 
of the past; all gone, never to be seen upon earth again : 
not a soul but myself was there—a stranger from a distant 
land the only inhabitant now. 
In the grave-yard there is only the gloom of death ; silence 
is all we look for there; but here, in the abiding-place of men, 
where once there was the din of life, there was the silence of 
death and more than its gloom ; for these walls were built for 
the living. I had wandered through ruins in another clime, 
where two thousand years ago a city was buried, and all were 
buried within it in the midst of life ; yet I saw their homes 
unchanged ; the frescoes upon the walls; the marks idly 
made by the soldiers ; the bedrooms, the wine-cellars, the 
signs upon the doors, the tracks of the carriage-wheels in the 
streets, as they were buried two thousand years ago ; so fresh, 
so life-like, that one would scarcely be startled to see the dead 
arise and resume their avocations. But here nothing but the 
bare and ruined walls was left to tell of the past; there was 
no connecting link to unite it with the present; nothing within 
the shattered gateways, or abroad over the desert around, but 
fragments of columns and massive stones—a waste of ruins ; 
all dreary and voiceless—all wrapt in desolation. 
The silence of a ship upon the sea at night, when all are 
buried in sleep, and the waters have ceased their dirge, is 
without gloom ; for the stars in the heavens are worlds where 
thought may wander; where the soul may drink in the beau- 
