his
heart, looked upon the crowded port and distant mountains as we look on
the Hudson, with its white sails and swift steamers, and the neighboring
hills. Where and what are they? The distant mountains stand, but the great
works which he erected to be a living honor to his name and country, are
perished forever. He has lingered with me among the ruins of the splendid
Agrigentum. Its numerous temples are dilapidated, or crumbling on the
earth; its walls, once its vaunted strength, are strewed in shattered
fragments on the steeps around. The dust of its multitudes serves to
fertilize the soil of its ancient site! But the stream still flows which
gave its name to the city, and the hills around yet produce the oil, the
wine, and the grain. We have sojourned for a time among the melancholy
vestiges of Syracuse; the scene of battles far more bloody than this land
has ever known. The army which the Athenians, inflated with pride and
presumption, sent against Syracuse, was here defeated. In yonder
land-locked bay the Athenian fleet, the mightiest that republic had ever
sent forth, and which they believed _invincible_, was destroyed. And the
Roman orator has eloquently said, that not only the navy of Athens, but
the glory and the empire of that republic, suffered shipwreck in the fatal
harbor of Syracuse. It was there the wonderful mechanical skill of
Archimedes was displayed against the Roman fleet, and those quiet waters
have been strewed with the dying and the dead. From this deserted citadel,
called of 'Labdalus,' the eye embraces the whole site of the once populous
Syracuse; and what does it behold? On the distant island of Ortygia, an
insignificant town, with a few small craft at anchor in the bay; nearer, a
desert of rocky hills, a goat-herd, and a few straggling goats. Turning
away from the melancholy scene, we behold afar off the snow-clad AEtna.
What a contrast is this to what we have just reviewed in the mind's eye!
_That_ is the work of God! Since its huge pyramid arose, nation after
nation has possessed its fertile slopes. The Siculi have labored on its
sides; the Greek, the Carthaginian and the Roman; the Norman and the
Saracen have struggled for mastery at its foot; but the roar of the battle
is past; the chariot and the charioteer are mingled in the dust. Yet yon
earth-born giant, fed by continual fires, each century augments, and in
all probability will continue to do so until

'The cloud-capt towers, the gorg