THE RUINS,
OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES
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INVOCATION.
Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I
invoke; to you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with
secret terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm
of delicious sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful
lessons, what affecting and profound reflections you suggest to him
who knows how to consult you! When the whole earth, in chains and
silence bowed the neck before its tyrants, you had already
proclaimed the truths which they abhor; and confounding the dust of
the king with that of the meanest slave, had announced to man the
sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in solitary adoration
of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions of the dead;
not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude, armed with
fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice, poising in
her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions of men
at the gates of eternity!
O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and
poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward
step, your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of
insolence.* You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from
avarice and extortion their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the
feeble whom they have despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the
poor by the anxieties of the rich; you console the wretched, by
opening to him a last asylum from distress; and you give to the
soul that just equipoise of strength and sensibility which
constitutes wisdom--the true science of life. Aware that all must
return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the burdens of
grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires within the
limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys
the comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the
impetuous sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the
feverish ardor of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the
soul from the fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above
the paltry interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from
your commanding position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind
is only accessible to the great affections--to the solid ideas of
virtue and of glory.
- The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of France;
and it was because the towers of that edifice are seen from the
Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted that admirable
residence, and established a new one in the savage forests of
Versailles.
(This note, like many others, has been omitted from the American
editions. It seems pertinent to the subject, and is explanatory of
the text.--Pub.)
Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm
of your solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of
the passions, I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will
employ myself on the means of effecting good for him, and build my
own happiness on the promotion of his.
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