Ages have passed away since the scene of glory. Luxury has enervated, vice has debased, and the strength of the mighty nation has consumed away. A barbarous enemy sacks the city. The heavens are darkened by a tempest, and the storm of war rages beneath, amid falling walls and colonnades, and the flames of temples and palaces.
[FIFTH OF THE SERIES.]
5. "Desolation." (61X39½.)
The moon ascends the twilight sky, near where the sun rose in the first picture. The last rays of the departed sun illumine a lonely column of the once proud city, on whose capital the heron has built her nest. The shades of evening steal over shattered and ivy-grown ruins. The steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky, unmoved, unchanged; but violence and time have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature. The gorgeous pageant has passed; the roar of battle has ceased; the multitude has sunk in the dust; the empire is extinct.
6. Portrait of John Adams, (1735-1826.) (25X30.) A. B. Durand.
From the original by Stuart.
(Reed Collection.)
(New York Gallery of Fine Arts.)
7. Portrait of John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848.) (25X30.) A. B. Durand.
Taken from life, in 1834.
(Reed Collection.)
(New York Gallery of Fine Arts.)
8. Portrait of James Monroe, (1758-1831.) (25X30.) A. B. Durand.
From the original by Stuart.
(Reed Collection.)
(New York Gallery of Fine Arts.)