The sun was setting over the wide waste of sand which surrounded the ancient city of the great Alexander. The sultry heat of a summer day was beginning to give place to a refreshing coolness. All was calm and still--the bustle of the mighty city, faintly heard in the distance, seemed to enhance the quiet of the solitary shore upon which walked one alone and in deep thought. He was a man in his youthful prime, but clad in the grave robes of one devoted to the study of philosophy, and his face was marked with the lines of much thought and study. Sometimes he moved slowly on, his eyes fixed on the sand which the retiring tide had left a firm and even footing. Anon he paused to look at the play of the little waves, as they came murmuring in, and curled their light foam over the last traces of his footsteps. Far as the eye could reach, the blue waters of the Mediterranean spread themselves, scarcely agitated by the faint breeze, and reflecting, in a long line of undulating light, the glory of the setting sun. As the bright luminary sunk, the eye of the wanderer rested on it, and a shade of deep melancholy gathered over his face. "Another day thou hast fulfilled thy task, O sun! and done thy Makers bidding--again thou hidest thyself in the ocean's bosom, to arise to-morrow with renewed splendor. Thou art no enigma, to give the lie to all the conclusions of philosophy. Clear as thy light is the purpose for which thou wast hung on high; steady as thy Maker's will is thy bright obedience. _Thou_ fulfillest thy destiny--but man, man--I and such as I--alas! we but resemble these useless waves which foam out their little moment and vanish on the barren sand. Alas! shall it never be that we shall find a solution of the mystery of our being? How aimless, how useless, appears our existence. Confined to this narrow stage, how vain are our mighty energies, our inexhaustible wishes, our infinite hopes. Where now," he exclaimed, as turning to retrace his steps, his eye was caught by the towers and temples of the distant city, lit by the sun with transitory splendor, "where now is the mighty hero who founded yonder city? He is gone forever from the stage of being, as little regarded or remembered as the dust which the hurrying crowd tramples in its streets. O for some certainty, some assurance that this life is not _all_; that hereafter permitted to awake from the sleep of death, man shall yet fill a part worthy of his mighty spirit, shall yet find in infinite perfection an object on which to expend those treasures of thought and feeling which corrode hidden here in his heart, or are wasted on idols as vain as yonder vapor which rises from the sea."