River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1885-02-05
The GREAT MONUMENT.
higher but Not so Wonderful as the Great
Works OF Antiquity,

The symmetry of its sides as it stands
away up there running into the blue
sky, is beauty and sublimity combined,
and this sublimity increases as one goes
nearer and nearer. At the base of the
mound it overpowers you, aud If you
will, as I did, climb up close to one Of
those big walls and putting your chin
against the marble, gaze straight up
for five hundred feet, il will take your
breath away. Here it seems the Chinese
wall running up into heaven-the Tower
of Babel approaching completion-or
Jacobs ladder nodded in marble. Look
at the marble in front of you, nowl II
is beautiful stone, as polished as Michael
Angeles statue of David and speckled
with scales or spots of frosted silver
Standing by the monument one is
greatly impressed with the mechanical
skill required to build it. Its stones
are great blocks, in some cases nine
feet long, two feet thick, and three and
more feet wide. There are more than
$4,000 of them. They are of white
marble, and weigh several tons each
The ingenuity which can raise such
stones several hundred feet above the
ground seems the triumph of mechani-
cal skill, and one is inclined to pat him
self on the back in that he belongs to
an age so far advanced in the march Of
progress. He Is inclined to sneer at the
works of the past. and to think that the
massive structure before him will out
last the ages. A second thought bids
him pause. He remembers the saying
in regard to the Roman Coliseum,
.sWhile stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand,
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall,
And when Rome falls with it shall fall the
world"
Still the Coliseum, when it was built
at the beginning of the Christian era,
had better chance of lasting than the
Washington monument. 1t was far
more wonderful structure, and the me-
chanical skill required in building it
was quite as great. The largest theatre
to-day in the world will not seat 1000
spectators. The Coliseum had seats
for 81 900 and standing room for 10000
more. Its walls were made of heavier
blocks than those in the Washington
monument, and they ran 1877 feet high.
It's interior was so large that the Wash
ington monument could have been laid
inside of it without disturbing its ma
sonry, and of the one third of the gi-
gantic structures which remains after
Rome has been building from it and
ravaging ii for centuries, the materials
alone are said to be worth two million and
a half of dollars. This is twice as much
as the cost of the Washington monument
and five hundred thousand dollars to
spare.
1t was a greater work than this to
erect the Colossus of Rhodes, that i'm
mense brazen statue, 140 feet high,
which stood across the Straits of the
| Hellspont so that tall-masted boats
could sail between its huge legs with
out injury. This statue weighed nearly
800, 900 pounds, and after an earthquake
overthrow it-as one indeed may some
time do the monument ruins lay
for nine centuries, and at the end of
that time it took a caravan of 900 cam
els to carry the metal away.
Look at Pompey's column which still
stands overlooking the Mediterranean
on the outside of Alexandria in Egypt.
A solid shaft, sixty seven feet high and
nine feet in diameter, of the heaviest of
red granite, raised upon pedestal l04
feet high. The mechanical skill
required to elevate that immense shaft
and to bring it thousand miles down
the Nile is quite equal to anything of the
present. And then the pyramids! the
top of the great pyramid has plat.
form thirtytwo feet square, only three
feet less than this Washington monu
ment where its pyramidal top begins
The blocks of which the pyramids are
constructed are much larger than those
in the Washington monument, and il
is said that it took ten years to make the
road over which to carry those heavy
stones. It took whole cities of men &c
build the pyramid of Cheops, and &c
cording to Herodotus the radishes and
onions which the workmen ate cost
once and one half the price of the Wash.
ington monument. This pyramid ha,
an area of thirteen acres at its base and
its height is 4S3 feet. 1t must have
cost billions to build it, and resting in
the dry atmos phere of the desert one
would think that here at least would
be morsel too hard and dry foe
the tooth of time. But the wind
and the weather have eaten even into
the pyramids and their beatty an6
splendor show the effect of decay. The
Washington monument in the humid
atmosphere of America, as it breathe
year by year the exhalations of the
swampy Potomac, will have far short.
er career. The seeds of nature invisi-
BILE to the eye will creep into its crevices
and time will crumble it's now solid
marble.
Still the monument will, while it lasts,
be considered one of the wonders of the
world 1t is now the highest thing
in the world-forty-th feet highel
than the spires of the Cologne Cattle
dral, and so tall that the Sphinx could
be put on the top of st. Paul's and still
be more than hundred feet below it
It will attract travellers from far an6
near. l do not agree with those who
say it is nothing but a great chimney
1t is work of massive, symmetrical
and wonderful immensely; and no mar
can view it without being filed with
great thoughts of man and nature and
their infinite possibilities.