You, too, proceed! make falling arts your care, Erect new wonders, and the old repair; Jones and Palladio to themselves restore, And be whate'er Vitruvius was before: Till kings call forth the ideas of your mind, (Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd.) Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid temples, worthier of the god, ascend; Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main; 200 Back to his bonds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land; These honours, peace to happy Britain brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings. VARIATION. After VER. 22 in the MS.-- Must bishops, lawyers, statesmen have the skill To build, to plant, judge paintings, what you will? Then why not Kent as well our treaties draw, Bridginan explain the gospel, Gibs the law? EPISTLE V. TO MR ADDISON. OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS.[54] See the wild waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very tombs now vanish'd, like their dead! Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil'd Where mix'd with slaves the groaning martyr toil'd: Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, Now drain'd a distant country of her floods: Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey, Statues of men, scarce less alive than they! 10 Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age, Some hostile fury, some religious rage, Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, Some buried marble half-preserves a name; That name the learn'd with fierce disputes pursue, And give to Titus old Vespasian's due. Ambition sigh'd: she found it vain to trust The faithless column, and the crumbling bust: 20 Huge moles, whose shadow stretch'd from shore to shore, Their ruins perish'd, and their place no more! Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, Beneath her palm, here sad Judaea weeps. Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine; A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, And little eagles wave their wings in gold. 30 The medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Through climes and ages bears each form and name: In one short view subjected to our eye Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie. With sharpen'd sight, pale antiquaries pore, The inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears, The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years! To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes, One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams. 40 Poor Vadius,[55] long with learned spleen devour'd. Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scour'd: And Curio, restless by the fair one's side, Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride.