I ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert.

The sun had sunk below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard at distant intervals.

Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls.

The solitude of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness.

The aspect of a great city deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated my mind to high contemplations.