The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-04-14

CoNsrANrTNoPLE February ssth,-Tae sAr, cophagus containing the body of Alexander
 "Imperisl Caesar, dead and turned to clay" was supposed to have left, in Shakespeare's time, enough of his poor mortal tenement to ''stop hole, to keep the wind away" but in Alex ander's sarcophagus, if this has indeed been discovered, the explorers will probably find, after lapse of over 2,200 years, as little of the ashes of poor mortality as they would discover in the unknown grave of Moses, could that also be found. It is said of Alexander that his body was depos- ited in a golden coffin at Alexandria by Ptolem9us, and over it was raised splendid mausoleum, and divine honors were paid to him, not only in Egypt, but in other countries. If the sarcophagus which the above quoted despatch says has been found at Saida contains the gold coffin, that circumstance will tend to confirm the reality of the supposed discovery. If the stone sepulchre that has now been found should be really proved to have contained the body of the old world conqueror it 'sould only be new and eloquent serr 'n to the people of to- day on the sphemersi aid unreal character of any phase or story Of earthly "greatness" that rests upon military conquests and military glory. Alexander conquered all the countries then known, even to India he was the world conquerer who "sighed for more worlds to conquer" He estab- lished Greek kingdoms throughout Asia, some of which in India ontlasted him for centuries he taught Europe the road to India he selected the site and founded the city of Alexandria, the Egyptian metropolis which was to be made the great depot of the ex- changes of the ancient east and west, selection which time and the rare fortunes of the city have shown to have been sagacious. He had plans, perhaps not wholly impracticable, for the union of Europe and Asia; and he encouraged art, science and the litera- ture of that time. His seems to have been an impulsive and not unkind or ungenerous nature, but he showed himself capable of atrocious acts, like the burning of Persepolis, the cruelties to conquered Tyre; and he was vain, elf-seeking and self indulgent man. That he should have changed the cur rent of human history in his brief career of twelve years, and have con- quered the world before he was thirty, and died at thirty-two, would be enough to stamp him as an extraor- dinary man. As a military leader he possessed, undoubtedly, q marvellous power of combination, Of shaping means to circumstances, of dealing with the necessities of the moment, in which his only peers, in any age of the world, were Hannibal and Napo- leon. That he was unable to bear his great success, and sunk into debauch- cry and drunken carousals, like the prolonged drunk" that finally car ried him off at Babylon, was in sense due to the age in which he lived. That his coffin should be discovered now, at the close of the nineteenth century of an era the dawn of which he never lived to see, or to imagine, is one of the strange occurrences which seem to connect the present times di- rectly with while the dusty emptiness of the coffin will tell its own story of the vanity of human greatness, which all ends in dust
 Heaped over with mound of grass,
 Two handfuis of white dust, shut in an urn of brassi
 The time was when the man whose earthly body is now represented by some specks of dust was deemed so great that even his debaucheries were heralded as the occurrence of some- thing godlike. An army of half million men was apprised by blare of trumpets that Alexander was drink ing.
 Spring Medicine.