PART OF THE WALLS OF ANTIOCH, OVER A RAVINE.

In this mountain-pass we know not whether most to admive—the grandeur of nature or the grandeur of man. Daring was the genius, and skilful the hand, that could war with these mighty solitudes, and plant there everlasting bulwarks, crowning the inaccessible ridges, and closing a ravine twenty-five feet wide with a wall that was seventy feet high. Beat, during two thousand years, by the torrent, the tempest's wing, and by many a fragment falling from above—their aspect is awful, and the frame shudders as we contemplate them; the precipice above, the precipice below; still they endure—of a fearful immortality, their lichens and wild anemones wantonly waving on the brink of death. Death is a power to which they are a stranger; the shepherd beneath their arches shall ere long be laid with the clods of the valley, the traveller, pausing in their shadow, shall tell his tale, and live his brief day: all the merchants of Syria, who journey this only caravan-road, shall pass away—and then shall come the people of succeeding ages, and find these walls even as they are now.

A short distance only, and what a startling contrast! We almost hear the rushing of the Orontes in the beautiful plain beneath, and the sounds of Antioch seem to come faintly on the ear. After so much beauty, it is welcome to be thus alone with the terrors of nature: the roebuck could not find a footing on these perpendicular precipices, and the vulture could scarcely rest amid their dark gulfs, to feast his eyes on the flocks on their brink. The sun is sunk below the peaks, the tinkling of the camel bell is passed away. The traveller, while night is falling, is here a lonely being: seated on a rock, and listening to the torrent rushing below. The Arab smiles as he swiftly passes him on his gallant steed; and the trader, while he gives him his evening blessing, pronounces his Inshallah in a tone of wonder and pity. In such a scene and hour, the past and the future rush on the mind in a tide of thoughts and images that are wild, beautiful, and irresistible: the narrow and silent pass, like a ledge over the abyss, is crowded, as of old, with many a warrior, and priest, and noble, in all their multitude: the Macedonian, burning for empire; the Roman, patient unto death; the Saracen, athirst for blood and Paradise; the Crusader, loving the Sepulchre only less than gold and fame;—they all sought immortality. Alas! its only memorial is this eternal and desert wall, begun by the first and finished by the latest conqueror. Kot such was the immortality sought by the first Christians, who fled to this solitude from the sword and dungeons of the city, and poured out their blood on these rocks. Martyrs of Antioch, who thus sealed your Redeemer's love—how bright, amidst such remembrances, is your destiny! And in the gloom deepening on this wilderness, where the stranger feels in a strange land, it is beautiful to think that each of these hoary caverns was then a temple of the Lord, where the hymns of praise rose even above the torrent's roar! Your brief day was quickly