The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-27 00:00:00

THE POETRY OF RAILROADS.

" I have heard many say, that on a railway all the
poetry of travelling is lost, and that we lose sight of the
beautiful and interesting. As to the last part of this
remark, I can only say that every one is free to stay at
whatever station he chooses, and look about him until
the next train arrives ; and as to all the poetry of tra-
velling being lost, I am quite of the contrary opinion.
It is in the narrow, close-packed diligences that poetry
vanishes : we become dull, we are plagued with heat and
dust in the best season of the year, and in winter by
bad, heavy roads ; we do not see nature itself in a wider
extent, but in longer draughts than in a railway carriage.
" Oh, what a noble and great achievement of the mind
is this production ! We feel ourselves as powerful as the
sorcerers of old ! We put our magic horse to the car-
riage, and space disappears ; we fly like the clouds in a
storm—as the bird of passage flies I Our wild horse
snorts and snuffs, and the dark steam issues out of his
nostrils. Mephistopheles could not fly quicker with
Faust on his cloak ! We are, with natural means, equally
as potent in the present age, as those in the middle ages
thought that only the Devil himself could be ! With our
cunning we are at his side, and, before he knows it him-
self, we are past him.
" I can remember but a few times in my life that I
ever felt myself so affected as I was on this railroad
journey :it was thus with all my thoughts—that I be-
held God face to face. I felt a devotion such as, when a
child, I have felt in the church alone ; and when older,
in the sun-illumined forest, or on the sea in a dead calm
and star-light night. Feeling and Imagination are nit the
only ones that reign in the realm of poetry : they have
a brother equally powerful '•—he is collect Intellect : he
proclaims the eternal truth, and in that, greatness and
poetry reside."

ST. PETER'S CHURCH.
" We ought to see St. Peter's Church during the
Easter week, to see it in the evening, and in bright sun-
shine 1 It is perfectly like enchantment to witness what
they call the lighting of the dome ; yet it is not alone
the dome and the cross high above it that stream with
lights, but it is the whole immense building with the
colonnades around the place We see everything in a
hue of fire ; the lamps are so richly diversified, and
placed in such situations, that the whole architectural
design stands forth confessed. It has a great effect, on
such an evening, to go from the illuminated place into
the church itself, where all is night and stillness ; but
directly under the dome, by the high altar, beams a
glory of several hundred silver lamps, placed on the
parapet around St. Peter's grave. We climb up to it,
and look down into the chapel shining with gold and
silver, where the marble figure of a kneeling Pope prays
in silence. There is such a peace, such a devotion in
the quiet of the church and in this venerable man's
figure, that we ourselves ar. filled with both, and, like
the Catholic, feel a desire to bend in adoration to the
Invisible Almighty.
" We must wander through this divine temple by sun-
light, when it is solitary, and the beautiful voices stream
from the side•chapel : we must come here during the
great festivals : the music vibrates, the incense per-
fumes, thousands kneel down and receive an old man's
blessing. Everything beams with light, everything
glows with gold and colours 1"
TEE ACROPOLIS.

"During my stay inAthens, I visited daily the Acro-
polis, whether it were sunshine or rain I I celebrated
my birthday by a visit here ; here I read my letters from
home. The Acropolis was the last place I visited at
Athens when I was about to leave ; my thoughts dwell
longest on the Acropolis when they visit Greece. It was
as if nature and art reposed on my breast in this place ;
here I felt no want, except that all my dear friends could
not participate with me in this spectacle.
" A sunset, seen from this place, is one of the most
elevated sights I know. I have seen such a one. I sat
on the steps of the Parthenon ; everything was void and
dead towards Hymettus ; black birds flew over the valh-y
where a single white column stands. An ass brayed
down there, and it sounded like the screams of a jackal ;
the sun sank behind the Bay of Salamis, and the moun-
tains shone with the most powerful colours. ../Egina was
as blue as the freshest violets. The same colours,
_ the
same forms of the mountains were seen by Plato,
Socrates, and the great men of that world, from the same
spot as that from which I myself saw them. It was the
same earth they had trodden. I felt, for a moment, that
I was living in those times. The sun went down, and
the glittering stars streamed forth over the dilapidated
temples ! I felt that God's work is eternal, man's
perishable ; but I drank lite's poetry from both, which (if
God allows it to flourish and expand) shall refresh the
heart of man."
MAHOMET'S BIRTHDAY.

" The fourth of May is the birth-day festival of the
prophet Mahomet or Mohammed ; the evening before,
the festivity began, and the commencement is undeni-
ably the finest part of it. That it was moonlight, and
that the Osman police laws, even under these circum-
stances, commands every one that goes out after sunset
to carry a candle in a lantern if he would not be arrested,
I do not regard as the most pleasant regulation ; but I
was obliged to put up with it, for neither the moonlight
nor the police laws could be changed. A young Rus-
sian, named Aderhas, and I went together, and without
any guide, but, furnished with lights in large paper
lanterns, we hastened away to see the illumination in
honour of the prophet. We went through one of the
narrow side streets of Pera, and a sight lay before us, so
magnificent, so beautiful, so fantastic, that the like of it
can hardly be expected to be seen in the north in an
oriental dream. From the row of houses where we
stood, and deep down towards the bay, there lay an ex-
tensive cemetery, that is to say, a wood of cypresses,
with large closely planted trees—pitchy night rested
I there.
" The path, which the foot of man and homes' hoof*

have formeel, winds over rugged hills, then downward
it mlrrow t.,twen

the rui:lvd gravestono..,,. Here and there moved a red
or blue lantern, which, ever and anon, disappeared and
returned to sight again in the dark ground ; there are a
few solitary houses in the cemetery; the light shone
from the topmost window, or was borne along the open
balcony.
" The bay, filled with vessels, shone over the tops of
the cypresses as blue as a Damascus blade ; two of the
largest ships were ornamented in the richest manner
with burning lamps ; they beamed around the port.
holes, about the gunwale, and the masts ; they hung in
the shrouds, and transformed them into a radiant net.
Opposite us lay the city itself, that great, extended Con-
stantinople, with its innumerable minarets, all entwined
with wreaths of lamps; the air was still red from the
setting sun, but so clear and transparent, that the moun-
tains of Asia and the eternal snow-covered Olympus
were plainly visible, the east with all its broken lines
like a silvery cloud behind the magnificent city. The
moonlight did not diminish the lustre of the lamps, but
only brought out the minarets, which seemed white
stalks with colossal fire-flowers; the lesser ones bore one
wreath of lights, the larger two, and the largest three,
one above the other."