But a change at length came. The sun sank. Twilight fell, shade on shade, on tower and column until total darkness shrouded the scene of glory. Yet, as if a new faculty of sight were given to me, the thickest darkness did not blunt the eye. I still saw all things—the minutest figures of the architecture, the finest carving of the airy castles, whose height was, even in the sunshine, almost too remote for vision. Suddenly there echoed the murmur of many voices, the tramping of many feet; the colossal gates opened and a procession of forms innumerable entered; they were of every period of life, of every pursuit, of every rank, of every country. All the various emblems of station, all the weapons and implements of mankind, all costumes, rich and strange, civilized and savage; all the attributes and adjuncts of the occupations of society were in that mighty train. The monarch, sceptered and crowned passed on his throne; the soldier reining in his charger; the philosopher gazing on his volume; the priest bearing the instruments of sacrifice. It was the triumph of a power ruling all mankind; but ruling them when their world has passed away—DEATH. [Sidenote: A Spectral Procession] While I gazed in breathless awe, I found myself involved in the procession. Resistance was in vain. I was conscious that I might as well have struggled against the tides of the ocean, or thought to stop the revolution of the globe. We advanced through the place of darkness by millions of millions, yet without crowding the majestic avenue or reaching its close. I rapidly recognized a multitude of faces which I had known from the models and memorials of the past ages. But the power that marshaled them had no regard for time. The pale, fixed Asiatic countenance of Ninus moved beside the glowing cheek and flashing eye of Alexander. The patriarch followed the Cæsar. The thousand years were as one day, the one day as a thousand years.