BEAUTIFUL APOSTROPHE. 279 (through one of his actors), and if an infidel was never before, by his own words, condemned, then he is the first; but hear him: "Sovereign and mysterious power of the universe! Secret mover of nature! Universal soul of everything that lives! Infinite and incomprehensible Being, whom, under so many forms, mortals have ignorantly worshipped! God, who in the immensity of the heavens dost guide revolving worlds, and people the abyss of space with millions of suns: say, what appearance do those human insects, which I can with difficulty distinguish upon the earth, make in thy eyes? "When thou directest the stars in their orbits, what to thee are the worms that crawl in the dust? Of what importance to thy infinite greatness are their distinctions of sects and parties? And how art thou concerned with the subtleties engendered by their folly? “And you, credulous men, show me the efficacy of your practices! During the many ages that you have observed or altered them, what changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Has the sun shone with greater brilliancy? Has the course of seasons at all varied? Is the earth more fruitful? Are the people more happy? "If God is good, how can he be pleased with your penan. ces? If he is infinite, what can your homage add to his glory? Inconsistent men, answer these questions!" Nature, which appears to be the god of the skeptic, unassisted by that "reason" which seems to be the talisman wherewith our author would cure all the diseases of the soul, does she not, in her most primitive state, bear witness against him? For the untutored savage would be tenfold more miserable than he is were he denied the privilege of doing "homage" to the glory of God; and would not "rea. son" alone teach civilized man that "penances," fasting, and prayer are acceptable to the Deity, even though it had nev er been commanded to men "that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance?" Skep. tics, infidels, "inconsistent men, answer these questions!" We will leave among his "Ruins" the philosopher, whose harp, like the Theban Memnon's, no longer attracts admiring crowds, nor lifts the vocal strain to the "God of the universe," that "God" to whom our own great Jehovah's servant said, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon." I cannot, however, take leave of our eloquent infidel wri. ter, now that I am about bidding adieu for ever to the won. ders of Egypt, without wafting to you an echo from this "shatter'd Memnon's still harmonious strings." Listen! "Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail! to you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect with secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man who knows how to consult you. "Tombs, what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Ty. rants tremble at your aspect; you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures; they turn from you with impatience, and, coward-like, endeavour to forget you amid the sump. tuousness of their palaces. It is you who bring home the rod of justice to the powerful oppressor; it is you that wrest the ill-gotten gold from the merciless extortioner, and avenge the cause of him that has none to help; you compensate the narrow enjoyments of the poor by dashing with care the goblet of the rich; to the unfortunate you offer a last and inviolable asylum; in a word, you give to the soul that just equilibrium of strength and tenderness which constitutes the wisdom of the sage and science of life. The wise man looks towards you, and scorns to amass vain grandeur and useless riches, with which he must soon part; you check his flights, without disarming his adventure and his courage; he feels the necessity of passing through the period assigned MORAL RUIN OF SKEPTICISM. 281 him, and he gives employment to his hours, and makes use of the goods that fortune has assigned him. Thus do you reign in the wild sallies of cupidity, calm the fever of tumultuous enjoyment, free the mind from the anarchy of the passions, and raise it above those little interests which tor. ment the mass of mankind. We ascend the eminence you afford us, and, viewing with one glance the limits of nations and the succession of ages, are incapable of any affections but such as are sublime, and entertain no ideas but those of virtue and glory. Alas! when this uncertain dream of life shall be over, what then will all avail our busy passions, unless they have left behind them the footsteps of utility?" May the "lessons" inculcated by these monuments produce a different effect upon my mind and heart than that which is developed in the pages succeeding this beautiful invocation of the deluded Volney! Among all the writers on infidelity, there is not one who comes before the world in so interesting and fascinating a garb as the author of the "Ruins of Empires ;" and while one turns away in disgust from the low ribaldry of the many, and the bitter invectives of the rest, one is too apt to be caught by the plausible rea. sonings of Volney, clothed as they are in such chaste and beautiful language. Alaric and Attila were satisfied with merely ruining tem. poral empires; but our great champion of infidelity has erected on such ruins a battery from whence he launches his thunders at the kingdom of Heaven: the former only im. brued their hands in the blood of nations, the latter would drive the souls of all mankind into eternal perdition. The outbreak of Gaul, the devastations she committed in the name of Liberty, under her imperial leader, and the "Ruins of Empires" that were strewed along his meteor track, were all as naught when compared with the moral ruin which was attempted to be imposed on the world by the civilian conclave, who, from the banks of the Seine, hurled anathemas, not only against Christianity, but in the very face of the Deity himself. The ambitious usurper, Prometheus like, was chained to a rock, and his vitals consumed by the vul. tures of remorse; and the demons of the French Propaganda may share the fate of those angels who rebelled against high Heaven. * * The next time I have the pleasure of addressing you I shall be somewhere in the Holy Land, perhaps at Jerusa lem. Until that, to me, long-desired moment arrives, I bid you an affectionate farewell. LETTER XXI. The Kamseen.-Heliopolis.-Moses at College.-Assemblage of Nations. -Speculation in Death.-More Quarantine. WHEN I last wrote you from Cairo, I little thought that my next would be from a place so distant from the capital of Egypt. I did expect that the present would be dated from Jerusalem; but fate ordained that we were not to follow the track of the children of Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land. In order to make you acquainted with the reasons which caused our change of route, it will be necessary for me to return with you to Cairo. You recollect that, in my last, I mentioned to you that we were only waiting for Mustafa to return from the Delta with the large camel which he was to purchase for my accom. modation. After waiting patiently for nearly a fortnight, THE KAMSEEN. 283 no Mustafa appeared, and, as the event proved, it was a happy circumstance for us that he was so long delayed. This is the season for the Kamseen (or fifty day) wind. This year it commenced blowing a few days earlier than usual, and the whole atmosphere was so filled with sand during the last three days of our stay in Cairo, that we could not venture outside of the city walls. Had we known of the necessity for a larger camel than the ordinary ones in use, we should have ordered one to be ready for us on our return from up the river, and then should have been off from Cairo in two or three days after. We should then have had time to pass over that part of the desert which we intended to cross, by way of Accaba and Petra, before the Kam seen began. Had Mustafa returned during the first week after our ar rival, we should have started immediately, and got caught by the Kamseen in the midst of the desert. Fortunately for us, as I said before, he was detained until the wind set in. Seeing the impossibility of venturing upon the desert short of fifty days, all of which time we would Have been vegetating in Cairo, we came to the wise conclusion to descend the Nile again to Alexandria, and take the monthly steamer thence to this place. No vessels are allowed to touch at any other port in the Levant until they perform quarantine at this port, or we should have sailed for Jaffa, and thence gone directly to Jerusalem. Since it has turned out thus, I must say that I am not sorry for having lost a fifteen days' camel ride merely to get a peep at the excavated rocks of Petra; for, after the caverned temples, tombs, and dwellings of the older Egypt, there is nothing at Petra worth the trouble it costs, except, perhaps, the curious natural defile leading to the valley in which the Roman city was built. Until within a few years there was a charm about Idumea, and the world really believed in the literal fulfilment |