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a time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel
house; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave
dug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth. The market-place is
empty, the candidate for popular favour finds none whom he can represent.
To chambers of painted state farewell!--To midnight revelry, and the
panting emulation of beauty, to costly dress and birth-day shew, to title
and the gilded coronet, farewell!
Farewell to the giant powers of man,--to knowledge that could pilot the
deep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shoreless ocean,--to
science that directed the silken balloon through the pathless air,--to
the power that could put a barrier to mighty waters, and set in motion
wheels, and beams, and vast machinery, that could divide rocks of granite
or marble, and make the mountains plain!
Farewell to the arts,--to eloquence, which is to the human mind as the
winds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;--farewell to poetry and
deep philosophy, for man's imagination is cold, and his enquiring mind can
no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for "there is no work, nor
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest!"--to
the graceful building, which in its perfect proportion transcended the rude
forms of nature, the fretted gothic and massy saracenic pile, to the
stupendous arch and glorious dome, the fluted column with its capital,
Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric, the peristyle and fair entablature, whose
harmony of form is to the eye as musical concord to the ear!--farewell to
sculpture, where the pure marble mocks human flesh, and in the plastic
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