and rights, and gradually, but surely, resumes her sway over the usurpations of man.[1]
Yet man is not without the power to stamp his footprints so heavily into his conquests, as that, if won back by Nature, she cannot efface them, even by the force of all her combined agencies,—the earthquake, the storm, or the wearing action of ages. On a coast as bare as the Campagna, stand the huge and yet elegant temples of Pæstum, more imposing by the solitude which surrounds them, fresh, comparatively, and young, while all else has perished. And in Sicily there yet stand at Segeste, at Salinuntum, and at Agrigentum, similar monuments of man's genius, skill, and strength; columns erect, unmoved, upon their platforms, or as at Salinuntum, laid on the ground like soldiers slain in battle, still keeping their ranks, after the earthquake which overthrew, but could not destroy, the magnificent work of remote ages.
If my preliminary observations brought us to the conclusion that cities might so totally perish as not to leave even a trace behind, we may be considered I trust to have gained one more step by the instances just mentioned—that the memory of a city is preserved by the survival only of great, solid, always public, and always beautiful architectural works.
Two points seem here to deserve further elucidation. First, I have alluded to these posthumous
- ↑ It would be easy to multiply similar examples without going to the East, where great and noble cities have totally disappeared. The ancient Falernum, now Santa Maria di Falleri, is clearly traceable by its walls with their gates, but the buildings have left no vestige behind them.
