dome of St. Peter’s will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum now is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence of some new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Jupiter, which at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image of St. Peter, may be employed for another holy use, as the personification of a future saint or divinity; and when the monuments of the papal magnificence shall be mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of the Caesars.  Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all the works and institutions belonging to humanity.  They rise, flourish, and then decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generally proportional to that of their elevation.  In ancient Thebes or Memphis the peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments from which we can judge of their arts, though we cannot understand the nature of their superstitions.  Of Babylon and of Troy the remains are almost extinct; and what we know of these famous cities is almost entirely derived from literary records.  Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few remains of their monuments; and the time will arrive when modern Rome shall be what ancient Rome now is; and ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre or Carthage now are, known only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured sand, containing the fragments of bricks or glass, washed up by the wave of a stormy sea.  I might pursue these thoughts still further, and show that the wood of the cross, or the bronze of the statue, decay as quickly as if they had not been sanctified; and I think I could show that their influence is owing to the imagination, which, when infinite time is considered, or the course of ages even, is null and its effect imperceptible; and similar results occur, whether the faith be that of Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah, or of Jesus.”

To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voice expressing some emotion:  “I do not think, Onuphrio, that you consider this question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hear you on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling of regret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a more minute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion.  You would then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation, decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you would have found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the foundation or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great an event, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, as comparatively of small moment; you would have found the establishment of the worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people as the most important circumstance in the history of the early world; you would have found the Christian dispensation naturally arising out of the Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan nations all preparatory to the triumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the most enlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climate and every people.”