David F. Dorr

“ Now Jupiter became ruler of the universe and sole master of the Empire of the world, and divided with his brothers, reserving for himself the kingdom of heaven, and giving the Empires of the sea to Neptune, and that of the infernal regions to Pluto. The sea moved at his wrath, and hell burned his opposers, and he looked down from heaven at the commotion of his wrath till the men on earth considered their welfare only secured by worshipping his smile. Athens and all her superstition is gone now, and the godly man now laughs at the folly of the wisdom that all talent of old times craved for. ”

“ EGYPT AND THE NILE.
Five months of Paris life is again spent, and with it winter has gone by. Winter takes away and deadens the energies of a gay man, but the spring time comes, and with it the awakening of man from his lethargy, and like old Sol from the bed of the sea, in his majesty he shakes himself in all his rising glory, and puts a fiery garb between himself and all the rest of creation, to scorch the temptation that would impede his bright and manly career. ”

“ Bologna, like a candle, must soon be extinguished for want of fuel of such combustibles as will burn up the dark ignorant pile now hid from the bright light that ought to shine supreme from the temple of wisdom of the times.
Venice, with her sea bathed palaces, may survive it, as she is still in beauty the “pride of the sea,” more so than Bologna is the pride of graveyards, churches and sausage. The “Two Young Men of Verona” is better known to the world to-day than Verona or Bologna. ”

“ Luxor, Carnack, the Memnonian and the Pyramids make us exclaim, “What monuments of pride can surpass these? what genius must have reflected on their foundations! what an ambition these people must have given to the rest of the world when found the glory of the world in their hieroglyphic stronghold of learning,” whose stronghold, to-day, is not to be battered down, because we cannot reach their hidden alphabet. Who is as one, we might suppose, “learned in all the learning of the Egyptians.” Have we as learned a man as Moses, and if yes, who can prove it? ”

“ The English people are alone in all things pertaining to domestic life. It would puzzle the double-width intellect of a hermit to tell what one was thinking about; and this nonchalence of air to surrounding circumstances is every moment blowing upon the object in their heart. France sets the fashion for the world, but what the morning paper say about the dress worn by the empress on the champs d’elysee yesterday, is not what the poorest maid servant is trying to find out to cut her calico by, but what her Majesty wore at Windsor or Buckingham. ”

“ The Sultan is a weak looking man, and has the marks of fatigue well written on his forehead and limbs; he also looks like a man surfeiting on the fat of the world. He is a slow walking man, and seems as if he experienced some weakness coming from a hidden source which allowed its approach so gradually and agreeable that he is not conscious of its fatality. He knows nothing of the rest of the world nor cares for it, but believes that himself and Constantinople are the wonders and powers of it. ”

“ BEAUTIFUL VENICE.
On a little slip of land between the gulf of Lepante and Athens, we come to Corinthe; we know it not, save a few immense pillars of marble pinnacling the site of Corinthe. Artists from all parts of the world come here and sit down at their base to sketch their dimensions; then away they go, with no regretful feelings for the great founders of arts stupendous, who, perhaps, three thousand years ago, were known far and near as men of the best faculties. ”

“ Here it was that Pharaoh dwelt when he marched in pursuit of Moses, when the cloud stood between them; here it is he is, to day, a mummy, if he was not embalmed in the Red Sea, but distinguished not; here it is the famine raged furiously and men sold themselves for food to Joseph; here it was that Moses had the power to turn ashes into dust, that flew over the land with the rapidity of a lightning flash, and infested the body of man with boils, and still the king loved the spot too well to give up one single foot of his powerful sway. ”

“ Next day the news came to the living wounded, that Napoleon was on his way, if not at Fontainbleau, and the old soldiers sprang up on their broken limbs, and filled the air with vive l’empereur, vive toujours.
Blucher and Wellington then commenced preparing to march on Paris and did. Blucher wanted to burn it but Wellington knew the revengeful spirit of the nation. He might have burned Paris as his allies wished, and, like Nero, fiddled while it burned, but all France would have been annihilated, or London razed to the earth. ”

“ She seems to have taken the last drop of the Italian’s patience and forbearance, while Leghorn, Lucca, Trieste, Venice, and other Italian cities, and other foreign powers, are trying to overflow her channels of power; they are perfectly willing that these troubled waters should spread across the plain of the Hapsburg policy, and turn the institution of tyranny from Hungary, Bohemia, and Italy; but the beardless, blue-eyed Emperor seems to be as undisturbed as a god of liberty, and heedless of the consequences of a rebellion of these warlike people. ”

“ The streets are crowded with soldiers, as in Paris, and the ladies go about the streets holding up their dresses just the right height to attract attention.
The rain is over, and there is no more attraction in the spicy town of Strasborg, so I am going to Baden Baden, the spiciest gambling place in Europe. In the Park is a great large building in the shape of a country stable, but full of splendor, called a Casino or conversation room, and this conspicuous appellation is conspicuously written on the front of the building. In this open hall—open to all—is gambling hours between each meal. ”

“ As I left this veritable tomb and sepulchre of the great god of wine and drunkards, my guide pointed to an aperture from the heart of a hill, and said, that entrance goes to the cave where Socrates was poisoned. We then went up the most imposing ruins of Athens, the Acropolis. The temples there looked down upon the rest of the temples of Athens, like Jupiter would at the feast of gods, it was higher and more stupendous than all. There was the seats of solid blocks of white marble of the twelve judges. ”

“ On one of the splendid painted broken columns that ran up through the hall or court of the unapproachable Pharaoh, Ptolemy, or Remese, a fox or hawk had been breakfasting on a rabbit, and martins had their nests perched on the side of the spreading columns that supported the beams of solid stone, of 12 feet wide and 20 long, over head. These ruins were sights of wonder to behold. Thebes could send to war 20,000 men from each of her hundred gates, making in all two millions of men. ”

“ There is three hundred churches in Naples, but the vestry of priesthood is no sign of the true temple of wisdom. The lower classes are craft ridden from the faggest end of an intelligent class, to the uttermost peak of sublime ignorance. The moral authority has great power over those who profess to be the followers of the Church; even the king himself, is afraid of the priest. ”

“ All are obliged to unite when a question of might against right comes up, as it is now before the world. Dickens says, “no doubt that all the ingenuity of men gifted with genius for finding differences, has never been able to impugn the doctrine of the unity of man.” He further says, “The European, Ethiopean, Mongolian, and American, are but different varieties of one species.” He then quotes Buffon, “Man, white in Europe, black in Africa, yellow in Asia, and red in America, is nothing but the same man differently dyed by climate.” ”

“ When Rome had a Cæsar and a Cicero, and a Cassius with a Brutus, Athens dictated the arts and sciences for her. Though she cannot claim the originality of them, she can the perfection of beautifying. The conquest of Alexander the Great, in Egypt, among the Africans, was considered the greatest triumph of conquest ever made by man, because it enabled the warlike people of Greece, to adorn their triumphs with the spoils of the vanquished. Egypt was a higher sphere of artistical science than any other nation on the earth. ”

“ About an hour after this the streets of Paris were as empty as a ball room after the festal scene. It is a wonderful sight to see the streets of Paris void of its moving mass of humanity. Like the streets of Pompeii, it reminds one of the victory of destruction. Paris looked as if it was mourning for those thousands that were fleetly moving on to eternity. Next day hundreds of ladies and gentlemen who were innocently killed, lay under a shed in Paris, to be recognized by their friends, and buried. ”

“ Greece, they love thee least who owe thee most.” The women are still pretty, and what is like a Grecian nose? Come, pilgrim, and see Athens in the days when it is not even a shadow of its former greatness, and ask yourself if power constitutes stability. Yes, go upon the Acropolis and gaze downward to the top of Mars’ hill, and look at the council stand of St. Paul; raise your eyes and turn them eastward, and if your imagination is as good as your sight, you will see the sea that in old times was covered over with the fleet of Alexander the Great. ”

“ No man can get along with a planter better than Cornelius Fellowes; for he considers a planter, or slave holder, his equal in every particular; consequently feels himself at home with them. A planter looks at a merchant as his agent until they become the leading houses in their community, then they are honored in having the great merchant to stay a few days and hunt. But when they go to New Orleans they expect to be waited on by the merchant, when to their great disgust, the merchant sends his clerk to look after their wants ”

“ I must now pass over many places and their accomplishments, and hasten back to France, to prepare myself for the roughest voyage yet—Egypt, Arabia and Palestine. Here is the Pyramids, Memphis, (now Cairo) Thebes, the Nile, the Red sea, the desert of Sahara, Mount Sinai, the tomb of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, at Hebron, the city of David; and to Jerusalem, down to Jericho where the Jordan’s muddy waters slip under the briny and sulphurous liquid of the grave God dug for Sodom and Gomorrah ”

“ The people all would fall on their knees, and the great man would bless them in the name of God, and the organ would peal its bassy notes of Te Deum, from east to west, and north to south, whilst the alarum from the belfry jarred my heart strings. ”

“ To describe this gorgeously furnished sanctum, it is enough to say, that all the brilliant artists of this scientific people have been engaged for hundreds of years in its decoration. Not only employed by the coffers of the Church of France, but by the throne that upheld numerous kings, as well as the wish of the whole populace of France, and the spoils of other nations. Hundreds of people from different parts of the world visit it every day, and all leave a franc or two. Thousands of Parisians visit it every day, and they make no mark of decay. ”

“ When you see woodcocks in the window of a second rate restaurateur, you must not be sure that the cook is putting his herbs among the joints of the woodcock you have ordered, instead of a diseased owl that was caught in the barn, for French cooks are not to be scared by an owl. The more he can dress a rat like a squirrel, the greater his [93] celebrity as an epicure of the most refined taste. If you go to market in Paris, you will see under a butcher’s stall, whole herds of rabbits, for rabbits are domestic animals in France. ”

“ About 50 yards ahead of this moving importance, a liveried outrider sped on at a rapid speed, that the populace might know that he was soliciting their attention to making way for the Queen. He wore long, white-legged boots, and held his Arab steed as artful as a Bedouin sporting over a rocky desert. His other habiliments were red, save his hat, which was a latest style silk. The driver keeps him in view, and has nothing to do but mount and drive off after this courier or out-rider, who gets his orders at the Palace where to lead. ”

“ Between Asia, Macedonia, and Greece is the most celebrated archipelago in the world. Six days along the Adriatic have brought me to Trieste, in Northern Italy. It now belongs to Austria. The Austrian sceptre is waving over nearly half of Italy. It is generally believed she cannot much longer hold her Italian possessions. The army of Austria, like its eagle’s wings, is stretched to its utmost extremity of space. She could not sustain 50,000 more troops, without breaking some of her internal machinery. Like an overflowing river, she is most too high to rise any higher without damaging her Union. ”