stars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity and
magnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of that
emotion which is so properly termed the sublime. The beauty and the
permanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging to
the system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and Divine
Architect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of man
in his most active and powerful state. And at this moment so humble
appeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to the
earth, so feeble their combinations, so minute the point of space, and so
limited the period of time in which they act, that I could hardly avoid
comparing the generations of man, and the effects of his genius and
power, to the swarms of luceoli or fire-flies which were dancing around
me and that appeared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom and darkness
of the ruins, but which were no longer visible when they rose above the
horizon, their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured in the
brightness of the moonbeams in the heavens."

Onuphrio said: "I am not sorry that you have changed the conversation.
You have given us the history of a most interesting recollection and well
expressed a solemn though humiliating feeling. In such moments and among
such scenes it is impossible not to be struck with the nothingness of
human glory and the transiency of human works. This, one of the greatest
monuments on the face of the earth, was raised by a people, then its
masters, only seventeen centuries ago; in a few ages more it will be but
as dust, and of all the testimonials of the vanity or power of man,
whether raised to immortalise his name, or to contain his decaying bones
without a name, no one is known to have a duration beyond what is
measured by the existence of a hundred generations; and it is only to
multiply centuple for instance the period of time, and the memorials of a
village and the monuments of a country churchyard may be compared with