"Cypress, and ivy, weed and wall flower grown Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch'd crush'd, columns strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steep'd In subterranean damps," now meets his eye where'er it turns. Well may he exclaim with such a prospect before him, in the language of the same poet, "The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless in her voiceless woes. * * * * * Alas! the lofty city! and alas! The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword, in bearing fame away. Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page!" When he sees all these mutations and revolutions on a single spot of earth, in the hour of his meditations his mind reverts to Him who alone is immutable and unchangeable, upon whose brow, time writes no wrinkles. "Alas, the pride of man goes down with him into the dust! it withers when the lamp of his transient existence flickers out into the long slumbering of the tomb." Eternal youth, eternal majesty, eternal duration, belong only to the great, the unchangeable I AM. The bustling transitory career of the mighty of the earth, when duly contemplated, should but the more strongly impress on the mind the infinity, eternity, and omnipotence of Deity. "Where now are they who sounded the clarion of war along the plains of Thessaly, the mount of Marathon and Samos's rocky isle. The trumpet's voice hath died upon the breeze; the thousands which it aroused have gone to rest; the castles which have been subdued and won, on whose walls the spear glittered and the cannon pealed, have crumbled into dust; the ivy lingers about the decaying turrets; the raven builds her nest in the casement, and sends upon the ear of midnight her desolate wailings; the owl hoots where the song was heard; and man, proud man, who once fought and won--he who reared the structure," "Sleeps where all must sleep." There is religion, yes a deep abiding religion in such a retrospect as this, and the mind which can trace back in its reflections the history of man along the pathway of ages, and see how dynasties have been overthrown, and thrones crumbled, how nations have risen, flourished for a day, then have declined and fallen, and been numbered among the things that are past and gone, cannot fail to turn, upon the principle of contrast, to the God of nature, whose throne is eternal, and whose dominion can never pass away.