204 
ARDASHIR. 
riding over a high and stoney country, with the plain on our right. 
After three hours’ steady course along this upland road, we began 
to descend the hill; and another hour brought us within sight of 
the widely-spread ruins of one of the greatest cities of ancient 
Armenia. Ardashir, like many other cities of that once mag¬ 
nificent country, has boasted the title of being its capital. But, 
in whatever variety of places the sovereign found it convenient 
to maintain his state for any time, those cities severally assumed 
the rank of metropolis. And that, in so comparatively a limited 
extent of territory, there should be found so many of these rival 
capitals, the extent and grandeur of any one of which mifdit 
well claim the exclusive distinction to which they all pretend, 
cannot but be an object of admiration to the traveller of our 
times, who generally sees the one great capital of a modern 
kingdom, sufficiently demonstrating its claims to honour, by its 
superiority in every respect, over all the other cities of the 
land. 
On reaching the remains of Ardashir, I saw the earth covered 
to an immense extent, and on every side, with that sort of 
irregular hillocks, which are formed by time over piles of ruins. 
These, with long dyke-like ridges, evidently of the same ve¬ 
nerable architect and materials, connecting them in parts, told 
me at once, I was entering the confines of a city, now no more. 
It is not in language to describe the effect on the mind, in vi¬ 
siting one of these places. The space, over which the eye wan¬ 
ders, all marked with memorials of the past; but where no 
pillar, nor dome, nor household wall of any kind, however 
fallen, yet remain to give a feeling of some present existence 
of the place, even by a progress in decay; all, here, is finished; 
buried under heaps of earth; the graves, not of the people 
