The view which
here presents itself is much more impressive than that at Pompeii,
near Naples. There, indeed, everything is destroyed, but it is
another and more orderly kind of destruction--streets and squares
appear as clean as if they had only been abandoned yesterday.
Houses, palaces, and temples are free from rubbish; even the track
of the carriages remain uneffaced. Pompeii, moreover, stands on a
plain, and it cannot, therefore, be seen at one glance; its extent,
too, is scarcely half so great as that of Sikri; the houses are
smaller, the palaces not so numerous, and inferior in splendour and
magnitude. But here a larger space is covered with magnificent
buildings, mosques, kiosks, columned halls, and arcades, with
everything that was in the power of art to create; and no single
object has escaped the destructive influence of time--all is falling
into ruin. It is scarcely more than two hundred years since the
town was in a flourishing state of wealth and magnificence, and it
is hardly possible to divest the mind of the idea of a terrible
earthquake having overwhelmed it.
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