Consolations in Travel | Page 5

from which we can judge of their arts, though we cannot
understand the nature of their superstitions. Of Babylon and of Troy the
remains are almost extinct; and what we know of these famous cities is
almost entirely derived from literary records. Ancient Greece and
Rome we view in the few remains of their monuments; and the time
will arrive when modern Rome shall be what ancient Rome now is; and
ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre or Carthage now are,
known only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured sand, containing
the fragments of bricks or glass, washed up by the wave of a stormy sea.
I might pursue these thoughts still further, and show that the wood of
the cross, or the bronze of the statue, decay as quickly as if they had not
been sanctified; and I think I could show that their influence is owing
to the imagination, which, when infinite time is considered, or the
course of ages even, is null and its effect imperceptible; and similar
results occur, whether the faith be that of Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah,
or of Jesus."
To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voice
expressing some emotion: "I do not think, Onuphrio, that you consider
this question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hear
you on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling of
regret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a more
minute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion.
You would then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation,
decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were
intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you
would have found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the

foundation or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so
great an event, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, as
comparatively of small moment; you would have found the
establishment of the worship of one God amongst a despised and
contemned people as the most important circumstance in the history of
the early world; you would have found the Christian dispensation
naturally arising out of the Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan
nations all preparatory to the triumph and final establishment of a creed
fitted for the most enlightened state of the human mind and equally
adapted to every climate and every people."
To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onuphrio replied in the most
tranquil manner and with the air of an unmoved philosopher:--"You
mistake me, Ambrosio, if you consider me as hostile to Christianity. I
am not of the school of the French Encyclopaedists, or of the English
infidels. I consider religion as essential to man, and belonging to the
human mind in the same manner as instincts belong to the brute
creation, a light, if you please of revelation to guide him through the
darkness of this life, and to keep alive his undying hope of immortality:
but pardon me if I consider this instinct as equally useful in all its
different forms, and still a divine light through whatever medium or
cloud of human passion or prejudice it passes. I reverence it in the
followers of Brahmah, in the disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in
all the variety of forms it adopts in the Christian world. You must not
be angry with me that I do not allow infallibility to your Church,
having been myself brought up by Protestant parents, who were rigidly
attached to the doctrines of Calvin."
I saw Ambrosio's countenance kindle at Onuphrio's explanation of his
opinions, and he appeared to be meditating an angry reply. I
endeavoured to change the conversation to the state of the Colosaeum,
with which it had begun. "These ruins," I said, "as you have both
observed, are highly impressive; yet when I saw them six years ago
they had a stronger effect on my imagination; whether it was the charm
of novelty, or that my mind was fresher, or that the circumstances
under which I saw them were peculiar, I know not, but probably all
these causes operated in affecting my mind. It was a still and beautiful

evening in the end of May; the last sunbeams were dying away in the
western sky and the first moonbeams shining in the eastern; the bright
orange tints lighted up the ruins and as it were kindled the snows that
still remained on the distant Apennines, which were visible from the
highest accessible part of the amphitheatre. In this glow of colouring,
the green of advanced spring softened the grey and yellow tints of the
decaying stones, and as the lights gradually became fainter, the