theaters, still only in incipient ruin, proclaim, in their slow decay, the greatness of those who reared them, in a land so lately savage.
The Pont du gard, at Nismes, and the amphitheaters, temples, arches, gates, baths,
bridges, and mausolea, which still adorn that city and Arles, Vienne, Rheims, Besancon,
Autun and Metz, are the instances, to which I direct those whose knowledge
of antiquity is not sufficient to suggest these splendid remains. Almost any well-written
book of travels in France will give the striking details of their present condition.
Malte-Brun also slightly alludes to them, and may be consulted by those who
wish to learn more of the proofs of my assertion than this brief notice can give.
The warlike Numidian and the wild Mauritanian, under the
same iron instruction, had long ago learned to robe their primitive
half-nakedness in the decent garments of civilized man. Even
the distant Getulian found the high range of Atlas no sure barrier,
against the wave of triumphant arms and arts, which rolled
resistlessly over him, and spent itself only on the pathless sands
of wide Sahara. So far did that all-subduing genius spread its
work, and so deeply did it make its marks, beyond the most distant
and impervious boundary of modern civilization, that the
latest march of discovery has found far older adventurers before
it, even in the great desert; and within a dozen years, European
travelers have brought to our knowledge walls and inscriptions,
which, after mouldering unknown in the dry, lonely waste, for
ages, at last met the astonished eyes of these gazers, with the still
striking witness of Roman power.
The travels of Denham and Clapperton across the desert, from Tripoli to Bornou,—of
Ritchie and Lyon, to Fezzan,—of Horneman and others, will abundantly
illustrate this passage.
Egypt, already twice classic, and renowned through two mighty
and distant series of ages, renewed her fading glories under new
conquerors, no less worthy to possess and adorn the land of the
Pharaohs, than were the Ptolemies. In that ancient home of art,
the new conquerors achieved works, inferior indeed to the still
lasting monuments of earlier greatness, but no less effectual in
securing the ornament and defense of the land. With a warlike
genius far surpassing the most triumphant energy of former rulers,
the legionaries of Rome made the valley of the Nile, from
its mouth to the eighth cataract, safe and wealthy. The desert
wanderers, whose hordes had once overwhelmed the throne of the
Pharaohs, and baffled the revenge of the Macedonian monarchs,
were now crushed, curbed, or driven into the wilds; while the
peaceful tiller of the ground, secure against their lawless attacks,
brought his rich harvests to a fair and certain market, through
