'_Who_ views with equal eye as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall? Atoms and systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world?' A great multitude were gathered together: on the right a huge fortress thundering to the sky--on the left a scaffold--a white fog--the open sea--and a mighty ship tumbling to the swell. The flat roofs and gorgeous balconies were covered with scarlet cloth, and thronged with women of all ages--their lips writhing and their eyes flashing. Underneath were a mute soldiery, with banners that moved not, and spears that glimmered not--a vast, rich and motionless pageant. Not a leaf stirred--not a finger was lifted--all eyes were fixed upon something afar off. The Grave alone had a voice, and the footstep of approaching Death grew audible, with the everlasting beat of the Ocean. The stagnant atmosphere burned with a lustreless, unchangeable and smouldering warmth. As the impatient and sluggish breathing of the Destroyer drew near, with a sound as of Earthquake and Pestilence laboring afar off, there appeared upon the outermost verge of the scaffold, near the fortress, a man of a simple and majestic presence, wearing no symbol of power, no badge of authority, before whom the multitude gave way with headlong precipitation, as though but to touch the hem of his garment were death itself, or something yet worse than death. After communicating with those about him in a low whisper, too low to be understood by others almost within his reach, one of the soldiers lifted a spear, at the point of which fluttered a blood-red banner, tufted and fringed with snow-white feathers, and pointed in silence toward a large opening, which appeared to command a view of the whole interior. The stranger drew near, and grasping one of the bars with a powerful hand, lifted himself up, and after looking awhile, turned away with a sick impatient shudder, and wiped his eyes; and then lifting himself up again, he made a signal to somebody within, and straightway a large tent-like awning was quietly withdrawn, so as to reveal the interior of a court-yard, with cells opening into it--in the nearest of which sat a princely-looking middle-aged man, half-buried and apparently half asleep or lost in thought, in a large, heavy, old-fashioned chair, with a curiously carved table before him, on which there lay, side by side with writing materials, a lamp and a letter evidently unfinished, two or three illuminated manuscripts, a dagger and a map; a massive goblet richly chased, the rough gold tinged and sweltering with the hot blood of the southern grape, a variety of strange mathematical instruments--a copy of Zoroaster--and a Hebrew Bible, with clasps of the costliest workmanship, and a cover of black velvet frosted with seed pearls--a crushed and trampled coronet--and a lighted pipe, ornamented with precious stones, the shaft a twisted serpent and the bowl a burning