eave it to future ages to discover their
solution: contenting ourselves with pointing out to our self-applauding
countrymen how much they have to do before they attain the level of
their advantages, or justify the boundless blessings which Providence
has bestowed upon them.

The plain of Troy, seen by moonlight, furnishes the subject of one of
our author's most striking passages:--

"It is midnight; the sea is calm as a mirror; the vessel floats
motionless on the resplendent surface. On our left, Tenedos
rises above the waves, and shuts out the view of the open sea:
on our right, and close to us, stretched out like a dark bar,
the low shore and indented coasts of Troy. The full moon, which
rises behind the snow-streaked summit of Mount Ida, sheds a
serene and doubtful light over the summits of the mountains,
the hills, the plain: its extending rays fall upon the sea, and
reach the shadow of our brig, forming a bright path which the
shades do not venture to approach. We can discern the _tumuli_,
which tradition still marks as the tombs of Hector and
Patroclus. The full moon, slightly tinged with red, which
discloses the undulations of the hills, resembles the bloody
buckler of Achilles; no light is to be seen on the coast, but a
distant twinkling, lighted by the shepherds on Mount Ida--not a
sound is to be heard but the flapping of the sail on the mast,
and the slight creaking of the mast itself; all seems dead like
the past in that deserted land. Seated on the forecastle, I see
that shore, those mountains, those ruins, those tombs, rise
like the ghost of the departed world, reappear from the bosom
of the sea with shadowy form, by the rays of the star of night,
which sleep on the hills, and disappear as the moon recedes
behind the summits of the mountains. It is a beautiful
additional page in the poems of Homer, the end of all history
and of all poetry! Unknown tombs, ruins without a certain name;
the earth naked and dark, but imperfectly lighted by the
immortal luminaries; new spectators passing by the old coast,
and repeating for the thousandth time the common epitaph of
mortality! Here lies an empire, here a town, here a people,
here a hero! God alone is great, and the thought which seeks
and adores him alone is imperishable upon earth. I feel no
desire to m