"If therefore thou shalt not WATCH. I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee Rev 13 " The Seven Churches. No. I.-SARDIS. THAT particular district of the Lesser Asia included within the river Cayster and the Caicus, the Ægean Sea, and the lower declivities of the Tauric chain of mountains behind Philadelphia, had early and great claims to the attention and admiration of mankind. Here was the mild Iona, with her arts and her elegances-her countless temples, still beautiful in their desolation-her crowded cities, the birth-places of poets and philosophers whose names survive the firm-set wall and the column of marble or of bronze, and now can never die. Here was Lydia and her riches-her gold-flowing Pactolus and Gygæan lake-her Tumuli, those lofty and enduring records of the dead, reckoned among the world's wonders; nor could Lydia's monarch be forgotten, and the name of Crosus cease "to point a moral and adorn a tale." Here, too, was the Pergamenan kingdom, and the splendid capital of Pergamus, and its library, inferior only to that of Alexandria; and Caria, Mysia, and Æolis, all contained within our narrow limits, and combining to form a region peculiarly enlightened and interesting-a federation of little states, characterized and perpetuated by the genius and taste inherent to the colonies of Greece-an oasis of civilization, and at times of freedom, on the edge of the barbarity and slavery of Asia. To the ancient Gentiles, moreover, this was a holy land; the polytheists here revered spots consecrated by mythology, as being the scenes of the loves and deeds of divinities, and of the earliest intercourse of the gods with the sons of men. To them, Niobe still mourned in stone on the lofty Sipylus, and the irate Latona still spoke her anger in the thunders of that mountain; the "regions of fire" which modern science may partially explain, and reduce to a volcanic district, were to them replete with omens of awful import, and in a special manner the regions of mystery and awe. The disciple of a sounder philosophy-though unimpressed with the Pagan creed that has passed so utterly away from the earth (which it was not calculated to improve) that not even a Julian would hope to re-illume its altars--cannot travel through this part of Asia Minor, without having his heart touched at each step of his lonely pilgrimage, and disposed to melancholy, by the sight of the utter desolation into which the long-prosperous and most abundantly peopled regions have fallen. He cannot hear the jackal's cry in the loneliness of Ephesus, without asking, where are the thousands and tens of thousands that thronged its streets and issued from its gates? He cannot see the storks and the wild doves, the only occupants of Philadelphia's crumbling walls-he cannot watch NO. XV.] the Turcoman driving his cattle among the fallen columns and desecrated walls of Sardis-he cannot see the relics of ancient art, the very perfection of sculpture and architecture, leveled with the earth, torn away, mutilated, to honor a barbarian's grave-without a sad thrilling of the heart, and an ardent wish that it were possible for the civilized portion of mankind to interfere, and stay the annihilating hand of the Turk. But to the inheritor of a purer faith, to a Christian, and one penetrated with the full value and spirit of Christianity, how immeasurably must this interest be increased! He views in these regions the early arena of the undying church of Christ; as he toils over the lofty mountains, and traverses the desolated plains, he remembers the ground was trod by the blessed feet of the immediate disciples of the Lord; from city to city (or rather, as in most cases, from site to site) he traces the outlines or the station of the primitive churches-the first to echo with the blessed word, the "glad tidings of salvation;" and to his eyes the Christian walls of Pergamus and Sardis, Philadelphia and Thyatira, are not rude, unintelligible masses, but endeared and consecrated objects, that, though now mute, were once "vocal with their Maker's praise," and echoed with the voices of those who received their mission and their instruction from the voice of the Son of God himself. Nor is this all:-he may seat himself in the shade of those ruins, and recurring to his book-the legacy of his Saviour-he may read the instruction and discipline addressed by the Apostles to the first Christians who congregated here; and, moreover, immeasurably increase the interest and awe he must feel, by tracing in his volume, and in the dread prediction of eighteen centuries ago, the very picture of the present desolation of the "Seven Churches of Asia." The lapse the of time, and all the sorrow and the sin that has filled up long space, may disappear to his eyes; but here is the prophecy and here its fulfilment !—a fulfilment to the very letter of the holy text. With convictions like these, the stones that strew the ground, the rent fragments that rise in the air, though "trembling to their fall," are not in his eyes merely the melancholy ruins of human industry and ingenuity; they are records of his God, and of the will of that Providence whose ways, inscrutable as they may be, he his taught to consider as ever just, with a tendency to mercy. I went to SARDIS, by rather a circuitous route, taking Kirkagatch and Magnesia on my way. The country I traversed, the luxuriant vales of the Caicus and the Hermus, two noble rivers!—was almost as deserted and melancholy as the regions between Smyrna and Pergamus; but nothing that I had yet seen equalled the desolation of the city of Sardis. G. BERGER, Holywell Street, Strand; & S. GILBERT, 26, Paternoster Row. [Price Twopence. I saw from afar the lofty Acropolis fringed with crumbling ruins; and when I crossed a branch of the Golden Pactolus which once flowed though the Agora, or market-place—and when I stood there at eleven o'clock, the very hour in which, in its ancient days, the place would be crowded-I saw not a soul, nor an object of any sort, to remind me that this solitude had been a vast and splendid city, save here and there a patch of ruin-a dismantled wall, or a heap of stone and brickwork mixed with brambles and creeping weeds. Where palaces and temples, theatres and crowded habitations, had stood, a green and flowery carpet of smooth sward met the eye; and the tall, stately asphodel, or day-lily, gleamed in its beauty and pallidness, where the marble column had risen in other days. The brook-for the Pactolus is now nothing more than a brook, and a choaked and insignificant one-gently "babbled by;" a cool breeze blew from the snow-covered Mount Tmolus, which faced me far across the plain. This breeze murmured along the steep, rough sides of the Acropolis, and sighed among the underwood that grew thickly at its foot. Other sounds were there none, save now and then the neighing of my horse, who crushed the flowers and the scented turf beneath his hoof, and gave utterance to the contentment and joy suggested by such fair pasture. This utter solitude, and in such a place, in the Agora of the populous Sardis, became oppressive: I would have summoned the countless thousands of ancient Lydians, that for long centuries had slept the sleep of death beneath that gay green sward: spirits might have walked there in broad noon-day-so silent,void,and awful, was the spot! Here the hand of destruction had spared nothing, but a few rent walls, which remained to tell all that had been done; were they not there, the eye might pass over the plain and the hill, as a scene of a common desert, and never dream that here was the site of Sardis! The Pagan temple and the Christian church had alike been desolated; the architectural beauty of the one, and the pure destination of the other, having been all inefficacious for their preservation. Four rugged, dark, low, walls, by the side of a little mill, represented the church: and two colums erect, and a few mutilated fragments of other columns, scattered on the sward or sunk in, were all that remained of that "beautiful and glorious edifice," the temple Cybele at Sardis! At the mill by the church I met two Greeks, and these, I believe, formed the resident Christian population of this once distinguished city of the Lord. From the mill I could see a group of mud huts on the acclivity under the southern cliffs of the Acropolis-there might have been half a dozen of these permament habitations, and they were flanked by about as many black tents. A pastoral and wandering tribe of Tur comans dwelt here at the moment, and the place almost retained the ancient name of the city-they called it Sart. Well might the Christian traveller exclaim here-and what is Sardis now? "Her foundations are fallen; her walls are thrown down." "She sits silent in darkness, and is no longer called the lady of kingdoms." "How doth the city sit sclitary that was full of people!" Perhaps I may be excused for quoting from my book of travels, the impressions, as they were noted down at the time, made upon me by the melancholy prospect from the Acropolis. "The view from the ragged brow was vast and sublime; the broad plain of the Hermus through which wound the stately and classical river, was at my feet; at the extremity of the plain, in a direction nearly due north, I could discern the tranquil bosom of the Gygæan lake; the lofty Tumuli, the sepulchres of Alyattes, and of Lydia's royal race; beyond which the view was terminated by a ridge of mountains. To the west was a chain of jagged, rocky hills; to the east were the high, broad cones of Tmolus, deeply covered with snow, whose white hues, tinged by the reflected purple of the setting sun, shone like an accumulated mound of brilliant roseleaves. Behind the Acropolis, to the south, the long deep valley of the Pactolus, plunged within the blackening sides of the majestic mountains, and cast itself in shade, seemed strikingly solemn and mysterious; its famed stream was at intervals hidden by, and at others seen rushing through, dark trees and thi thick underwood, whilst at the more open parts of the valley, beneath where I stood, it was burnished with gold and crimson, by the farewell rays of the god of day. Of living beings there were none visible, save a small herd of lowing cattle, driven by two mounted Turcomans in the direction of the concealed village; but historical recollections and imagination could people the spot with Cimmerians, Lydians, Persians, Medes, Macedonians, Athenians, Romans, Greeks of a declining empire, and Turks of a rising one-races that have in turns flourished or played an active part on this theatre, and have in turns disappeared. By such aids, the ancient warrior, with his helmet and breastplate of shining steel, might be seen again to climb the castellated heights; the conqueror of the world to lay his victorious sword on the altars of Polytheism; and, passing over the lapse of centuries, the fanatic Unitarian, the Moslem Emir, to lift up the voice of praise to Allah and to destiny, that had awarded him such fair conquests." The troubled state of the country, and other circumstances of a more private nature, prevented me from extending my journey into Asia Minor as I had intended. I turned back from Mount Tmolus, not without a sigh of regret. I passed 庭 a night at Sardis, in a mode quite accordant with the desolation of the place. My lodging was one of the mud-built huts of the Turcomans; my meal, boiled wheat, and a little lamb roasted whole, and in the most primitive manner; and my bed, some sheepskins spread on the floor. But before I retired to supper and repose, I took a walk in the direction of the ruined temple. It was a short walk, for there was no moonlight to guide my steps, or disclose the objects that interested me, and the large sheep-dogs whom I disturbed set up a tremendous chorus of barking: yet I shall not soon forget the feelings of awe and melancholy that invaded me as thus, in the gloom of night, and alone, I traversed the deserted site of the splendid, the wealthy capital of Lydia, where Croesus had counted his treasures, and Alexander triumphed. The next morning I left Sardis, and keeping to the northward, passing the river Hermus, at rather a bad ford; and then, turning a little to the west, rode on to the Tumuli or sepulchral mounds, which were covered with luxuriant grass, green and gay. "Sitting on the gigantic barrow, the greatest work of the ancient Lydians, held as one of the world's wonders, and esteemed by the father of history as inferior only to the works of the Egyptians and Babylonians ;" and gazing over the plain, and on the course of the Hermus for many miles, or "on the placid Gygæan lake, with sedgy borders, and waves reflecting the blue sky, and solitary as the recesses of an undiscovered world," I enjoyed moments of exquisite happiness; yet the reflections that occupied those moments, though perhaps hallowing to the heart, were emphatically sad. I sat among the dead. Those numerous sepulchral barrows, forming a gigantic champ des morts, covered thousands and thousands who had lived and felt, suffered and enjoyed, even like myself. Here, around me, "the princes " of Lydia, her wise men, her captains, and "her rulers, and her mighty men, slept a perpetual sleep ;" and the name of one of them, (of Alyattes) and the nature and use of the extraordinary mounds, has been preserved only by the pages of Herodotus. From the banks of the Gygæan lake, I reluctantly recrossed the Hermus, and took my way back to Smyrna, by Casabar and Nymphi; but, by the aid of Mr. Arundell and other travellers, I will endeavor to convey my readers whither I did not go, and to complete a picture of the Seven Churches. Humility. SHAKSPERE. Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low ;-an excellent thing in woman. A Soul longing for Heaven. MARIA DE FLEURY. YE angels who stand round the throne, Tune, tune your soft harps to his praise; He form'd you the spirits you are, So happy, so noble, so good; When others sunk down in despair, Confirm'd by his power ye stood. Ye saints, who stand nearer than they, And cast your bright crowns at his feet, His grace and his glory display, And all his rich mercy repeat; He snatch'd you from hell and the grave, He ransom'd from death and despair; For you he was mighty to save, Almighty to bring you safe there. Oh, when will the period appear, When I shall unite in your song? I'm weary of lingering here, And I to your Saviour belong! I'm fetter'd and chain'd up in clay, I struggle and pant to be free; I long to be soaring away, My God and my Saviour to see. I want to put on my attire, Wash'd white in the blood of the Lamb: I want to be one of your choir, I want-Oh, I want to be there, The Flower. TOBIN. THE flower enamored of the sun, At his departure, hangs her head and weeps, And shrouds her sweetness up, and keeps Sad vigil, like a cloistered nun, Till his returning ray appears, Waking her beauty as he dries her tears! |