Christianity was established at Rome. Feeling differently on these
subjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of the
destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than
as a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward in
melancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent dome of
St. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum now
is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence of
some new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Jupiter, which
at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image of St. Peter,
may be employed for another holy use, as the personification of a future
saint or divinity; and when the monuments of the papal magnificence shall
be mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of the
Caesars. Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all the
works and institutions belonging to humanity. They rise, flourish, and
then decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generally
proportional to that of their elevation. In ancient Thebes or Memphis
the peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments 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