Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1853-1862, 1861-03-17
"Men may cone and men nay 70,
But I foW on forever"

And then, in the ghostly stiffness of the night.
entered the TrlIithou. The Temple of Jupiter m
der the deceptive lightning Of the moon looked per
feet It seemed as if Just finished BY the architect
and tomorrow Antonius POntifsx Maximus might
himself be coming TO consecrate il to the mighty
JOye. The religion Of the Roman bas been eelesra-
ted there. Sacrifices 10 the god Of Baalbee were
offered there for four hundred years after the
Christian era. Then another religion occupied its
halls and shrines- The Christians possessed It The
Gross was erected where the beardless statute Of
Jupiter had stood The Bishop OF Heliopols sat in
the Council Of Antioch
Three centuries heard the hymns Of the church
chanted in It's temple and the lay procession Of the
Then war was In the land. The extermins ting con-
quests of the Crescent with a tide Of blood flowed
from the ocean board to the deserts of Damascus
and auenched the lamps that had burned everIast-
ingly before the affairs Of the City Of the Sun.
Darkness covered it for three hundred years, and
silence biotted out the name of HehOpOls from his
tory. When it once more emerges, Its classic title
has persisted in the food Of devastation. Men called
il Baalbec and the Arabian historian and BenJsEIn
of Tuedo Ca. D. 1859 noted it, and tell as Of It's
have shaken the land Of Syria, thrown down It's
structures. and crushed to death its people.
SaladIn next occupied the stage of time. King
Baldwin and Count Raymend carried IRE and sword
through the land, cried havoc and let slip the dogs
of war under its battements; for. no longer city
of temples, no longer the home Of religion It bad
been converted into fortress, and the historian
said it as castle built with very large stones
And than another tragic actor fretted his
little day before the world. He babe It's
citizens surrender and Tsmerlane, flushed with
victory, marched onward to Damascus. An
other century and a half rolled over, and we hear
no more of it, until the modern spirit Of travel first
exhibited itself, and the long catalogue Of names
commenced with the Frenchman Belar, A. D. 1913;
the English Maundrell 1891 which links il AZ last
with the people of our own times.
The heather, the Christian, the Saracen. the
Turk, all have been its lords and masters. What
train of ghostly forms my fancy pictured withslow
and stately march, going past me- sweeping over the
floor and through the eOlumned aises where once IN
life they trodl Pompey; the veterans Of Augustuss
legiOns; the Emperors Of ROme-Antonius, the
bloody Caraealla the Christian Theodosius; the ae
tor-the poor actor Gelasinus earning the hart>
bought food of the sock and the buslrin, and yet
with the religion Of Christ in his heart, going WIKI
him on to the stage, and hallOwIng his martyr
deathl the impetuous crusader; the ccnquering aud
courtly Saladin; the fiery TamerlaEe--sh, al seem
ed TO pass before me, their wan hands pointing to
the ruins they had left; and the moon shining
through the broken inches. dismantied the srchi-
traves and pillars of the Trilithou. reft Of all the
sculptors clothing, exposed them with funeral light
before me in giant FORMS the denuded corpse Of inn
peria PRIDE the skeletons Of earthly Pageantry and
power, mouldering away in the fa.low Of centuries