'Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown, Matted and mass'd together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch-crush'd columns strown In fragments, chok'd-up vaults and frescos steeped In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, Deeming it midnight: temples, baths, or halls? Pronounce, who can; for all that Learning reaped From her research, hath been, that these are walls: * * * 'tis thus the mighty falls!'
The train of reflections which springs from a review of these magnificent specimens of skill, genius, and toil, is peculiarly exciting. If, in the vast field of observation which this continent presents, there is one subject that more than another claims attention--if there is one which is calculated to inspire an American with admiration and enthusiasm--it is the antiquities of his country. It may in truth be said, that were we to pronounce what are the great and peculiar charms of this 'new world,' we should say, at once, its antiquities--the antiquities of its buried cities--its long-lost relics of a great and ingenious people--the sublimity of ages that every where surrounds us, and the strange associations which, rush upon the mind, as we view ourselves in connection with an unknown and extinct species of men. Which way soever we turn our eyes, we behold the mighty remnants of their arts, and the wide waste of their mental and physical creations. We every where see the wonderful labors of those who, in times long gone by, gloried in these stupendous achievements, but whose might and inventions are told only in their far-spread destruction; a people, in short, of whom history has not left a solitary wreck behind! To describe the antique arts of such a people, strewed as they are over United and Central America, or buried for thousands of years beneath venerable forests, is a task which ages only can accomplish. An approach to this, therefore, is all our most ardent hopes can at present realize. Curiosity has indeed been awakened by the little which has lately been brought to light. The ambition of the learned has been excited, and the enthusiasm of the antiquarian enkindled; yet these are but the things of yesterday. The most industrious research, and the lapse of many years, are required, to develope the hidden treasures of art with which our continent abounds. For three hundred years have the most extraordinary of these slept in Central America, among strangers from another, not a _newer_ world, as they had before slept for many thousands! Even now, comparatively little is known of their character. Sufficient, however, has recently been disclosed, to excite our wonder and admiration. In truth, had we fallen upon a new planet, crowded with strange memorials of a high order of genius, that for an indefinite time had survived their unknown authors, we should not be more amazed, than we are in gazing upon the anomalous relics of American antiquity.