cle led me to
meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
serious and profound.

Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being
in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts,
having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into
the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous
ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues
beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some
entire, others in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments
of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of
white marble, and of the most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of
three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of
a vast edifice, formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting
the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days to
contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.

Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind
the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the
east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was
clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the
horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered
the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and
uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only
of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard
at distant intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could
only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude
of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene,
impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city
deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all
elevated my mind to high contemplations. I