Pillory

“ In the centre of this stood the whipping-post and pillory.
The hour of ten tolled out from the steeple down the street. It was the same bell that called the people together on Sunday to worship God and to supplicate his mercy. It [Pg 228] was a bell of various uses. It summoned the saints to prayer and the sinners to punishment.
At its earliest stroke the jailer issued from the prison with a forlorn-looking white man in his clutches. He hurried his prisoner up the ladder, and prepared to fasten him in the pillory. The boys below collected in knots, and fingered the missiles in their hands. ”

“ Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a wine-press ”

“ One saw beneath the summit of the pyramid a chamber with a hollow prison, in which was a statue of stone enclosing the body of a man, who had on the breast a pectoral of gold enriched by fine stones, and a sword of inestimable price, on the head a carbuncle the size of an egg, brilliant as the sun, on which were characters no man could read. ”

“ When the shadows of night fell, the temple made a bonfire that illuminated the scenes of pillage going on all around. The big idols of loathly aspect had been thrown down, broken to pieces, and despoiled of their jewels and the heavy plates of gold that encumbered them. Our soldiers had swarmed out of the building, past a tank to the houses of some priests beyond. Not one single custodian of the temple survived, and I stood alone in the outer courtyard, watching in idle fashion the tongues of flame licking the beams and rafters and paint-bedaubed walls of the wrecked edifice. ”

“ The embattled towers, the shining domes, the tall and slender minarets rise on every side among groves of the graceful palm and spreading fig-tree, intermingled with the sad remains of the years that are gone, the crumbling temple, the prostrate pillar, and the mouldering archway! Friezes and pedestals, rich with carving and hieroglyphics, lie piled in shapeless masses, covered with moss and corroded with saltpetre, meeting the view on every side, and striking the stranger with veneration and awe, while his heart is filled with sadness and sublimity. ”

“ The church and hamlet there had perished by fire; the place was desolate; not a human being was visible, and without halting, the troops pushed on, with an advanced guard to 'feel the way,' in front, till they reached a portion of the defile where the impending rocks were higher, the way narrower, and the trailing vines had given place to the dense, dark, and woody luxuriance of forest trees. ”

“ In the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The hard road goes on and on—and the wind sings through your helmet-plume—past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. ”

“ The subterraneous chambers are particularly worthy of remark: here is not only space sufficient for the abode of a number of men and cattle, but one even lights upon large vaults for the drilling of troops, a mill, a chapel, and whatever else could be required underground, provided the surface were in a state of disturbance. ”

“ All the other wall was rough and bare; beset with great spikes and nails wherefrom depended a thousand forms of ironware, and ancient useless metal things, the broken, rusty implements of peace and war. The floor seemed, as I took in every detail of this subterranean chamber, to be bare earth, stamped hard and glossy with constant treading, while here and there in hollows black water stood in pools, and gray ashes from a furnace-fire margined those miry places. ”

“ In the red sunsets of the evening sky their heated imagination traced moving and blood-coloured phantoms, colonies in ruins, and overthrown temples, whose pillars were stained with human gore, and in the ridges which the receding tide left upon the shore, their fancies conjured up the carcases of the dead. ”

“ When the fire has burnt low and become a mass of glowing coals, voices are hushed, the camp is still, and each, half hypnotized by gazing into the weirdly shifting lights of the dying embers, is wrapped in introspection. ”

“ Thus, the ramparts of a fortress surmounted by streamers, a plain covered with armies, or the tents of an encampment, show that the female whose hand covered the glass is to be united to a soldier, and that her life is to be spent in camps and garrisons. A fleet of ships, a church or pulpit, a half-finished building, a field stripped into furrows, a garden, a forest—all these, and fifty other scenes, afford symbols equally unequivocal. ”

“ Years shall sweep on in steady tide, and these broad fields be whitened with countless sepulchres—the mounds, covered with graves where affection still shall plant the flower and trail the vine—in the deep valleys, and romantic glens to receive their ne’er returning tenants; the sculptured vaults still shall roll ope their marble fronts—beneath the massive pyramid’s firm-fixed base, the Martyrs of the Prisons find their final resting-place—and on this spot the stately column shooting high in air, to future generations tell, the bloody story of yon battle-field. ”

“ Lines of fortification began to reveal themselves, and the Doctor thought himself arrived, but he was to wind further on, and be more struck with the dreariness and inhospitality of the rugged rock, almost bare of vegetation, the very trees of stone, and older than our creation; the melancholy late ripening harvest within stone walls, the whole surface furrowed by stern rents and crevices riven by nature, or cut into greater harshness by the quarries hewn by man. ”

“ At dusk the minarets are illuminated; a peal of cannon from the Arsenal, echoed by others from the forts along the Bosphorus, relieves the suffering followers of the Prophet, and after an hour of silence, during which they are all at home, feasting the streets are filled with noisy crowds, and every ccffee. shop is thronged. Every night there are illuminations along the water, which, added to the crowns of light sparkling on the hundred minarets and domes, give a magical effect to the night view of the city. ”

“ This seems to be a proverbial expression, signifying no more than this, "We are as safe in this city as flesh in a boiling pot; the walls of the city shall be to us as walls of brass, and shall receive no more damage from the besiegers about it than the cauldron does from the fire under it. Those that think to force us out of our city into captivity shall find it to be as much at their peril as it would be to take the flesh out of a boiling pot with their hands." ”

“ There is little time for exploring church or manor-house or abbey ruin. The old encampment, the cluster of grave-mounds, or the ancient cross of which perhaps the traveller may have caught a glimpse in passing, appeals to him in vain. ”

“ When we looked at the stupendous heights of the rock and fortress, it seemed as if a miracle alone could have enabled us to descend them, suspended by so slight and ill-made a cord as that which we had been able to construct out of our shirt-linen and a little cobbler’s twine. ”

“ More than one mediæval century is represented by a few churches, a few castles, a few bridges, a few books, a damaged house here and there, and some weapons, tools, and furniture. All else in the story of its life is tragic and sinister, a wild pilgrimage whose shrines are battlefields and whose ranks are visited periodically by the plague. ”

“ I have not space nor time to tell of how we climbed the pylons and wandered through the dark mysterious chambers, and stood in admiration before those beautiful and ever varied pillars, and explored dark winding passages built in the walls themselves. One has an overwhelming sense of sublimity and awe as he stands under the shadow and in the profound hush of these sacred monuments of a departed glory. ”

“ The war relics of devastated structures leave a sad and painful impression. Of the many deserted battlefields which I have seen during the two years past, the nameless little graves faintly marked with little wooden crosses, of the deserted trenches, nothing gave me so much food for deep and sad reflection as the bare and lonely chimneys projecting from amid piles of rubbish, melancholy blackened pots, the scattered remnants of domesticity ”

“ STONE PILLARS AND CROSSES. (For the Mirror.)
It appears from the accounts of the earliest historians, that single stones, or rude pillars were raised on various occasions, in the most remote ages. Of these we have frequent notices in the Old Testament, as of that raised by Jacob at Lug, afterwards named Bethel; a pillar was also raised by him at the grave of Rachel. The Gentiles set up pillars for idolatrous purposes. The Paphians worshipped their Venus under the form of a white pyramid, and the Brachmans the great God under the figure of a little column of stone. ”

“ Scenes in the camp, and on the bloody field of martial combat, where death, in its most terrific forms, is met by many,—the horrors of the siege, and the consequences to the vanquished,—the sufferings, the writhings and groans, of the distressed and the dying,—too deeply impress the mind to be ever erased ”

“ Behind the domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it the sorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The night is blue and breathless; the spasms of the lightning are intermittent among the minarets and the domes; the hot, fierce fever of the garden waxes in the almond scent of peaches and the white odalisques advancing, sleek oracles of mood.... ”

“ Had we nothing which we could call our own except the bare ground on which to fight?' Your ancestors looked upon a camp as a safe haven for the army against every mischance, from which they went out to battle, where, after being tossed in the storm of battle, they could find a safe retreat. ”

“ And dying prisoners, in their loathsome dungeons, see through the horrid gloom their small red eyes, like glittering coals, hear in the death-like silence the rush of their claw-like feet, and start up shrieking in the darkness and watch through the awful night. ”

“ The great armies roll along their hideous waves, and leave behind them smoking and depopulated deserts. The pillager is in every house, plucking even the morsel of bread from the lips of the starving child. ”

“ Until now I have lived fit for girls
and I have campaigned not without glory;
now this temple wall, which guards
the left flank of seaborn Venus,
will hold my lyre, retired from war, and
my weapons. ”

“ Hills and vales are seen covered with stately and immense trunks, blackened with flame, and smitten down in every form and variety of misery. They lie like soldiers, when the battle is done, in the waters, among the ashes, wounded, beheaded, denuded of their limbs, their exhumed roots, like chevaux de frise, glaring on the astonished eye. ”

“ The sunless cellars, with their mouldy walls and water-seeped floors, where our women sought refuge from shell-fire through the hours of the night, contributed no new or untried experience. In such cellars as these, in their home cities, under the flicker of a tallow candle, they have ministered to the sick and comforted the dying. ”

“ When they emerged on a landing at the ceiling of the Temple level and looked down twenty feet, it was to a boiling pool of humankind, gray workers, naked slaves, velvet merchants, leather artisans, women and children, howling and trampling until the din shook the walls and rattled the teeth in a man's skull. ”

“ I will say first that the warriors of your holiness will meet with wonders in the temples. In one chamber torches will quench in their hands, in another, flames and disgusting monsters will surround them. In one place a wall will stop the way, or a gulf will open before their feet. ”

“ A number of huge rocks fallen ages ago, and rolled from some distant pinnacle, were heaped together on a broad and inclined shelf, and enclosed a space of ground so regular in form, and yet so rudely bounded by those sprawling barriers, that it looked to the imagination not unlike the interior of some stupendous temple, built by a barbaric people, and overwhelmed, many ages before, by some great convulsion. ”

“ A [Pg 351] mortar-shell came rushing through the air, and fell upon the cave, and bursting in the ground entered the cave; a fragment of the shell mashed the head of the little sleeper, crushing out the young life, and leaving the distracted mother to pierce the heavens with her cries of agony.”
How blightingly the hand of war lay upon that once flourishing city! The closed and desolate houses, the gardens with open gates, and the poor, starving mules, standing amid the flowers, picking off every green leaf, to allay their hunger, presented a sad picture. ”

“ There in the whitewashed wards with the smell of blood and ether, where the maimed lie stiff and still and the dying moan and the mad rave in wild delirium, stand there and your soul shall shrivel in horror at the destruction of men! ”

“ But when we are in camp on our trotting chargers, Our bucklers round our necks and our lances lowered, And the great cold is congealing us altogether, And our limbs are crushed before and behind, And our enemies are approaching us, Then we should wish to be in a cellar so large, That we might never be seen by any means. ”

“ Judge, then, of my horror, when I went out to the scene of the pillage and saw men lying, some dead, with ghastly faces glaring up at the hot sun, others with gaping wounds, and others moaning pitifully on the road-way, with sand on their faces and in their hair. ”

“ Happy is he who shall live in my house, for in my house are seven great pillars which join together the entire vault under a good roof; they stand upon a floor placed on immovable foundations and they fortify all the walls with great strength. ”