ablets engraved with Greek inscriptions.
It is a world of precious relics, a wilderness of marred and mutilated
gems. And yet what are these things to the wonders that lie buried here
under the ground? At Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain,
are great mosques and cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from the
temples and palaces of Ephesus, and yet one has only to scratch the
ground here to match them. We shall never know what magnificence is,
until this imperial city is laid bare to the sun.

The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen and the one that impressed
us most, (for we do not know much about art and can not easily work up
ourselves into ecstasies over it,) is one that lies in this old theatre
of Ephesus which St. Paul's riot has made so celebrated. It is only the
headless body of a man, clad in a coat of mail, with a Medusa head upon
the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such dignity and such
majesty were never thrown into a form of stone before.

What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The massive arches of
some of these ruins rest upon piers that are fifteen feet square and
built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of which are as large as a
Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a boarding-house sofa. They are not
shells or shafts of stone filled inside with rubbish, but the whole pier
is a mass of solid masonry. Vast arches, that may have been the gates of
the city, are built in the same way. They have braved the storms and
sieges of three thousand years, and have been shaken by many an
earthquake, but still they stand. When they dig alongside of them, they
find ranges of ponderous masonry that are as perfect in every detail as
they were the day those old Cyclopian giants finished them. An English
Company is going to excavate Ephesus--and then!

And now am I reminded of--

THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.

In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Once
upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago, seven young men lived near
each other in Ephesus, who belonged to the despised sect of the
Christians. It came to pass that the good King Maximilianus, (I am
telling this story for nice little boys and girls,) it came to pass, I
say, that the good King Maximilianus fell to persecuting the Christians,
and as time rolled on he made it very warm for them. So the seven young
men said one to the other, let us get up and t