[CHAP. IV.]
THE LAST OF THE ENGLISHMEN.
A large tent had been pitched in an open space among the ruins of the ancient city. Before it stood Oriel Porphyry leaning on a gun, with Zabra at his side, resting on his harp. At the distance of a few feet Fortyfolios and Tourniquet were seated on a fallen pillar, disputing about the character of a building, the remains of which lay before them. The captain and the midshipman were conversing together by the side of the tent, and grouped about were twenty or thirty sailors well armed—some reclining on the ground, others leaning against a column, and the rest congregated into little parties, engaged in talking over the adventures of the day, or in passing their opinions upon the neighbouring ruins.
On one side of the tent stood a great portion of a very elegant structure, of considerable dimensions, and of a classical style of architecture; on the other side stood the ruins of a building of about the same size, with a handsome portico supported by several beautiful pillars, upon which might be observed a female draperied figure much mutilated. A short distance from between them there arose a tall column with a bronze statue of a warrior, broken and disfigured, lying at its base. Beyond the column was a flight of broken steps that led to an open space overgrown with wild shrubs and weeds; and beyond these, and around in every direction, nothing met the eye but confused heaps of stone and brickwork, overgrown with rank herbage; and pillars, and walls, and glassless windows.
“I am tired of this continual ruin,” exclaimed Oriel Porphyry. “We have travelled all the day and met nothing but broken pedestals, and prostrate capitals; porches without pillars, and pillars without porches; trembling porticoes, tottering walls, and roofless dwellings. I never witnessed such a perfect desolation. The only living thing I have seen was a wolf, who stared at me as if quite unused to a human countenance, and never attempted to move till I sent the contents of my gun at his head. Then, immediately I had fired, there flew around me such flights of bats, ravens, vultures, and owls, and they created such a din of screaming and hooting, that I was absolutely startled.”
“See how the ivy clings to the wall, Oriel!” said Zabra to his patron, as he pointed to a ruin beside them; “how it twines round the fluted pillar, and hides the ornaments of the richly decorated capital. There is poetry astir in those leaves—there is a music breathing in the breeze that shakes them. There! see you the bird moving out its head from their friendly shelter to notice our movements? She has her nest there, Oriel: in that little circle are all her pleasures concentrated. She has made her happiness in the very desolation of which you complain. It is impossible to look around and say all is barren. There is not a weed that grows but what is full of enjoyment for myriads of creatures of which we take no note. Is there nothing in these stones which does not awaken in you associations that ought to people them with the countless multitudes that once found pleasure in this wilderness? I see not the ruin. I notice not the silence. Memory looks through the vista of departed time, and lo! all is splendour and beauty—and the deserted porticoes echo with the voice of gladness. Let me sing to you, Oriel; this is a glorious place for sweet sounds and antique memories, and I will see to what use I can apply them.”
The young musician, after a short, touching prelude, then sung, with the deep expression that characterised all his attempts at minstrelsy, the following words:—
“To the home of the brave ones, the true and the kind,
With a heart filled with hope I have been;
And I thought of the gladness and peace I should find,
And the smiles of delight I had seen.
“But the dwelling was homeless, and roofless, and bare,
’Twas a ruin that threatened to fall;
And my sorrowing heart seemed to cling to despair,
Like the ivy that clung to the wall.