Ruins

“ The ruin becomes a rock, and the rock a ruin; on the high promontory the blossom breathes fragrance, below lies the sea with open jaws; over Scylla gleam beautiful houses and streets amidst the lair of frightful rocks. And the god flies over the land and sees the child on the temple-column by the shore, and the temples of the gods full of monks, the marshes full of nameless ruins, and the coasts full of blossoms and grottoes, and the blooming myrtles and grapes, and the fire mountains and the islands, and Ischia. ”

“ Presently ruins came in sight, crumbling buildings, which the night invested with grandeur, the sad remains of a deserted settlement, whose name will be an eternal protest against these fertile shores and forests full of game. ”

“ A wreck combats with stormy waves; the moon goes down amid black clouds; on the shore, among the ruins of a temple, sits a Mussulman—a beautiful and thoughtful figure—and surveys the scene. I likewise observe it, and an agreeable shudder passes through me. A vast ruin is better and far more beautiful than a small and an empty happiness. ”

“ In my country, ruins are like a minor chord in music; here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of time, but the results of violence; they recall no valuable memories of a remote past, and are mere encumbrances to the busy present. Evidently they are out of place in America except on St. Simon’s island, between this savage selvage of civilization and the great Atlantic deep. ”

“ But what remains of its grandeur? It has vanished like "a tale that is told;" it is passed away like a dream; the palaces are dust; the grassy sod has grown in mounds over the ruins of streets and fallen houses; nature has turfed them in one common grave with their inhabitants. The lofty palms have faded away and given place to forest trees, whose roots spring from the crumbled ruins; the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain ”

“ High on either side rose grey ruins, pinnacled upon the ancient mountain-tops, all that remained of the feudal domination of the past; dark, and solemn, and sad, each itself a legend, appealing more strongly to the imagination than any of those with which tradition had ornamented the walls. ”

“ The plaintive-echoing ruins pour their streams.
Yet here adventurous in the sacred search
Of ancient arts, the delicate of mind,
Curious and modest, from all climes resort,
Grateful society! with these I raise,
The toilsome step up the proud Palatine,
Through spiry cypress groves, and towering pine,
Waving aloft o'er the big ruin's brows,
On numerous arches reared; and frequent stopped,
The sunk ground startles me with dreadful chasm,
Breathing forth darkness from the vast profound
Of aisles and halls, within the mountain's womb. ”

“ And of course all about these ecclesiastical ruins were the ruins of homes, and shops and stores—places just as pitifully appealing in their appalling wreck—where men had lived and loved and striven and failed and risen again and gone on slowly climbing through the weary centuries to the heights of grace toward which the tendrils of their hearts, pictured in the cloister and the apse and the tower, were so blindly groping. ”

“ The ruins are of the choicest and most enchanting kind, with high walls, columns, arches, mouldings, buttresses, and every detail in full, of window and door; and such a carpet of nice low-cropped but thick grass as is seldom seen. What finish everywhere! How little to touch in the way of repair or amendment! Here, as on all ruins, is the companion-like ivy, doing its good work. These ruins seem to be at home. The others we have seen appeared to have a solitary beauty; but here, so in [Pg 258] the city, and surrounded by every-day life, finish, care, and animation, they are not companionless. ”

“ Where there were open spaces vast heaps of seasoned wood now flaming caused processions of light and shadow among ruins, against old triumphal arches, against churches and dwellings old, half-old, and new, lived in, chanted in still, intact and usable. ”

“ Scarce a heap remains, to tell of its numerous and magnificent structures. Their very ruins are ruined. The land looks as if the foot of man had never trodden it, and the hand of man never cultivated it. Here it rises into melancholy mounds; there it sinks into hollows and pits: like that plain which God overthrew, it neither is sown nor beareth. ”

“ Surely a ruin is sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet, what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! ”

“ Every street, and square, and avenue was choked with shattered ruins, rent from top to bottom; houses, convents, and churches presented the most fearful aspect of ruin; while every second minute a new impetus seemed to be given to the convulsed earth, causing those that remained still perfect to rock and rend. ”

“ Very imperfect ideas,” continues this celebrated traveller, “can be formed of these extensive ruins, even from the accounts of the most skilful and accurate travellers. It is absolutely impossible to imagine the scene, displayed, without seeing it. The most sublime ideas, that can be formed from the most magnificent specimens of our present architecture, would give a very incorrect picture of these ruins; for such is the difference, not only in magnitude, but in form, proportion, and construction, that even the pencil can convey but a faint idea of the whole. ”

“ Ruined temples, with long rows of broken columns, and great houses cracked and fallen into decay, stood silent and deserted, grim, grey relics of a glorious past. Here and there obelisks and colossi still stood, and the broad streets of the giant city were everywhere well-defined by the ruins, half-buried by drifting sand on either side. Above, a single eagle soared high in the heavens, the only sign of life in that once populous and magnificent centre of a lost civilisation. ”

“ The red and wavering flame threw from time to time a glare of light across the strange wild forms of the ruins, presently leaving them in deep shadow, appearing to take refuge within, as a dying memory flashes up and then buries itself in the oblivion of the past. ”

“ How else would so many Englishmen travel thousands of miles to fall into ecstacies at beauties of a very inferior order to these! I must ask one more question;—why ruins have so much stronger an effect on the mind than the highest perfect specimen of architectural beauty? It seems almost as if these works of man did not attain their full perfection till Nature had tempered and corrected them:—and yet it is well that man should again step in, just at that point where Nature begins to efface all traces of his hand. A vast and well-preserved ruin is the most beautiful of buildings. ”

“ All were ruins—ruins vaster than those of any structures ever reared by the hands of men—as if some magic city, built by warlocks and sorcerers, had been wrecked by the wrath of the elder gods. Evil dwelt in the silent places; from battlement to lonely battlement fiends' voices might have raved; in the utter desolation of each empty valley the squat blind tower might have stood, and giants lolled at length to see the death of a soul at bay. ”

“ When we see a ruin of a church, an abbey, a castle, an old manor-house, even of a straw-thatched cottage, we are sad, for we think what they were, beautiful in their several ways, and all having lost much by becoming ruins. ”

“ Standing on some commanding crag in the Bad Lands in the early morning or when the purple 112 shadows of evening fill the gorges and ravines, the most unimaginative traveller sees in the silence about him the ruins of a vast city, with cathedrals, temples, and palaces of varied colours and weird designs such as no mortal hand ever fashioned. ”

“ Ruins are happily so scarce in our young and thriving republic, that the simple legend which gives a name to my story, may awaken some interest among those, to whose imaginations the solitary remains of the past seem to speak in the breathings of the winds that sweep over their ruins. ”

“ If so, the aim is missed: for, as majesty, fallen from the pinnacle of power, becomes more interesting, so do ruins inspire greater veneration than the most pompous structure, towering in the splendour of its perfection. ”

“ The dim-seen ruins of castle or religious house, secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world. ”

“ Ruins confront you on every hand, the ruins of edifices that in their prime could have been nothing but commonplace, and in this day of their disaster have none of the dignity which we like to discover in mute memorials of a vanished past. ”

“ But it is well worth a little exertion and risk to reach the top of this majestic portal, where you can lie lazily among great piles of broken carvings carvings and watch the long shadows of the setting sun creep over what have been called "the most beautiful mass of ruins that man has ever seen and the like of which he will never behold again." ”

“ As some wild animal in a forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilization, towers, temples and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands abashed and vaguely wondering, having neither reason to understand nor feeling to enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood. ”

“ These ruins, chiefly piles of brick—remnants of massive walls or lofty archways—may not be beautiful in themselves; but overgrown with parasites and 226flowering shrubs, they are grouped in so picturesque a manner among broken ground and dark gigantic trees—the many towers of the city gathering near—the distant hills on the clear horizon, with clouds just resting in scattered clusters on the tops, and the sky above, deeply blue—that the whole scene is delightful to feel, as well as look at. ”

“ In others, there is nothing to be seen but a confused mass of unintelligible ruins; and in others still, every thing is gone, except, perhaps, some single arch or gateway, which stands among a mass of shapeless mounds, the last remaining relic of the edifice it once adorned, and itself tottering, perhaps, on the brink of its precipitous foundation, as if just ready to fall. [Pg 73]
[Pg 74]
These old ruins are visited every year by thousands of persons who come from every part of the world to see them. ”

“ It is one of the visible dwelling-places of Time; and the ruins that still mock, to a certain extent, his destructive progress, have in themselves a painful chronicle of capricious change and various affliction. They speak for the dead that lie beneath them in no stinted number ”

“ The curse of the wretched and the ruined, of the widows and wives, and children that turn out wicked, follow you, and stifle you on your death-beds! May your gilded rooms and your painted roofs come tumbling on you in ruins ”

“ It amazes one to find in the midst of ruins [Pg 210] such noble buildings, overflowing with wealth. Pictures, statuary, marbles, and precious metals, dazzle, and at last weary, the traveller, and form a strange contrast to the desolate fields, the undrained swamps, the mouldering tenements, and the beggarly population, that are collected around them. ”

“ These are the most interesting of all the ruins. As you wind up a narrow valley between the mountain range, you have them on your right and left, topping the hills, or descending to the border of the valley: some presenting heaps of rubbish, and some half fallen, expose their shattered chambers, and one or two still exist in almost an entire state of preservation. They are seen from a great distance, and have a striking effect in this desert solitude. ”

“ These ruins and these fallow tracts which are found in the same enclosure close to the densest multitudes, these sterile mountains shouldering the most meticulous culture, and the wide expanse of the cemeteries, do not impress the mind with a false idea ”

“ When the waves above them are calm, these ruins can still be seen, though centuries have rolled away since they were first submerged. Yet who would regard these waste places as the abodes of living men? ”

“ The very greatness of the destruction prevents the possibility of an accurate estimate. Beneath the ghastly ruins of the once happy towns and villages along the pathway of the deluge, who shall say how many victims lie buried? ”

“ The people, who now walked about the ruins, appeared like men in some dismal desert, or rather, in some great city laid waste by a cruel enemy; to which was added the stench that came from some poor creatures' bodies, beds, and other combustible goods. ”

“ Time is modelling now, instead of art. Miles of ancient pottery and tiles, hardly allowing the blades of corn to grow among the ruins; sheep-tracks among the massive foundations; asses loaded with brush-wood, from shrubs growing in the courts of ancient palaces and temples; shepherds with their flocks, the bells of the goats heard from among the rocks; tombs and sarcophagi of ancient heroes, covered with moss, some broken and some entire; fragments, and ornaments, [Pg 167] and stones containing mutilated inscriptions;—these are the objects, which Platæa now presents. ”

“ Then there was a wall, either of the town or of some one large building which forms the whole ruin. Is there a ring of mounds with a central depression? Then there was a temple or large permanent building, with house ruins around it. Is there a gentle slope up one side, and a sharp fall on the other? Then it is a rubbish mound. Is the mass high above the general soil? Then several successive layers of habitation may be expected. So, even from afar, some ideas may be gleaned before setting foot on a ruined site. ”