To remind such persons of the divine mandate to destroy all monuments of idolatry in the land of Canaan would be altogether insufferable, and might provoke, from some of them, a profane attack upon the authority from which it proceeded. To plead the example of the early Christians, in demolishing the temples and statues dedicated to pagan polytheism, would only awaken the keen regrets that are felt for the irreparable loss.[403] It would be still worse to refer to the apocalyptic predictions, which some have been so fanatical as to think were fulfilled in the miserable spoliation of that “great city,” which, under all its revolutions, has so eminently proved the nurse of the arts, and given encouragement to painters, statuaries, and sculptors, to “harpers, and musicians, and pipers, and trumpeters, and craftsmen of whatsoever craft,” who to this day have not forgotten their obligations to it, nor ceased to bewail its destruction. In any apology which I make for the {272} reformers, I would alleviate instead of aggravating the distress which is felt for the loss of such valuable memorials of antiquity. It has been observed by high authority, that there are certain commodities which derive their principal value from their extreme rarity, and which, if found in great quantities, would cease to be sought after or prized. A nobleman of great literary reputation has, indeed, questioned the justness of this observation, so far as respects precious stones and metals.[404] But I flatter myself, that the noble author and the learned critic, however much they may differ as to public wealth, will agree that the observation is perfectly just, as applied to those commodities which constitute the wealth and engage the researches of the antiquary. With him rarity is always an essential requisite and primary recommendation. His property, like that of the possessor of the famous Sibylline books, does not decrease in value by the reduction of its quantity, but after the greater part has been destroyed, becomes still more precious. If the matter be viewed in this light, antiquarians have no reason to complain of the ravages of the reformers, who have left them such valuable remains, and placed them in that very state which awakens in their minds the most lively sentiments of the sublime and beautiful, by reducing them to――ruins.