Consolations in Travel | Page 5

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 masses appeared grander and more gigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast of light and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of the brightest sapphire, but