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"
There are a prodigious number of stately palaces."
There are.
"And the numerous temples, sumptuous and magnificent, may bear
comparison with the most lauded of antiquity."
All this I must acknowledge. Still there is an infinity of mud huts, and
abominable hovels. We cannot help perceiving abundance of filth in
every kennel, and, were it not for the over-powering fumes of idolatrous
incense, I have no doubt we should find a most intolerable stench.
Did you ever behold streets so insufferably narrow, or houses so
miraculously tall? What gloom their shadows cast upon the ground! It
is well the swinging lamps in those endless colonnades are kept burning
throughout the day; we should otherwise have the darkness of Egypt in
the time of her desolation.
"It is certainly a strange place! What is the meaning of yonder singular
building? See! it towers above all others, and lies to the eastward of
what I take to be the royal palace."
That is the new Temple of the Sun, who is adored in Syria under the
title of Elah Gabalah. Hereafter a very notorious Roman Emperor
will institute this worship in Rome, and thence derive a cognomen,
180
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