Select Speeches of Kossuth

by Lajos Kossuth

The shadow of that dark word passed across my mind, and amid the bustle of this gigantic bee-hive, there I stood with meditation alone.

And the spirit of the immovable Past rose before my eyes, unfolding the misty picture-rolls of vanished greatness, and of the fragility of human things.

And among their dissolving views, there I saw the scorched soil of Africa, and upon that soil Thebes with its hundred gates, more splendid than the most splendid of all the existing cities of the world; Thebes, the pride of old Egypt, the first metropolis of arts and sciences, and the mysterious cradle of so many doctrines which still rule mankind in different shapes, though it has long forgotten their source. There I saw Syria with its hundred cities, every city a nation, and every nation with an empire's might. Baalbec, with its gigantic temples, the very ruins of which baffle the imagination of man, as they stand like mountains of carved rocks in the desert where for hundreds of miles not a stone is to be found, and no river flows, offering its tolerant back to carry a mountain's weight upon, and yet there they stand, those gigantic ruins; and as we glance at them with astonishment, though we have mastered the mysterious elements of nature, and know the combination of levers, and how to catch the lightning, and to command the power of steam and of compressed air, and how to write with the burning fluid out of which the thunderbolt is forged, and how to drive the current of streams up the mountain's top, and how to make the air shine in the night like the light of the sun, and how to dive to the bottom of the deep ocean, and how to rise up to the sky—though we know all this, and many things else, still, looking at the temples of Baalbec, we cannot forbear to ask what people of giants was that, which could do what neither the efforts of our skill nor the ravaging hand of unrelenting time can undo, through thousands of years. And then I saw the dissolving picture of Nineveh, with its ramparts now covered with mountains of sand, where Layard is digging up colossal winged bulls, huge as a mountain, and yet carved with the nicety of a cameo; and then Babylon, with its wonderful walls; and Jerusalem, with its unequalled temple; Tyrus, with its countless fleets; Arad, with its wharves; and Sidon, with its labyrinth of work-shops and factories; and Ascalon, and Gaza, and Beyrout, and farther off Persepolis, with its world of palaces.

All these passed before my eyes as they have been, and again they passed as they now are, with no trace of their ancient greatness, but here and there a ruin, and everywhere the desolation of tombs. With all their splendour, power, and might, they vanished like a bubble, or like the dream of a child, leaving but for a moment a drop of cold sweat upon the sleeper's brow, or a quivering smile upon his lips; then, this wiped away, dream, sweat, smile—all is nothingness.

So the powerful cities of the ancient greatness of a giant age; their very memory but a sad monument of the fragility of human things.

And yet, proud of the passing hour's bliss, men speak of the future, and believe themselves insured against its vicissitudes!

And the spirit of history rolled on the misty shapes of the past before the eyes of my soul. After those cities of old came the nations of old. The Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the war-like Philistines, the commercial republics of Phoenicia and the Persians, ruling from the Indus to the Mediterranean, and Egypt becoming the centre of the universe, after having been thousands of years ago the cradle of its civilization.

Where is the power, the splendour, and the glory of all those mighty nations? All has vanished without other trace than such as the foot of the wanderer leaves upon the dust.

And still men speak of the future with proud security!

And yet they know that Carthage is no more, though it ruled Spain, and ruled Africa beyond the pillars of Hercules down to Cerne, an immense territory, blessed with all the blessings of nature, which Hannon filled with flourishing cities, of which now no trace remains.