258                              HISTORY OF
 

CHAPTER X.
 

The author^s reflections upon what has been said.

Among the numerous events, which are each
in their turn, the most direful and melancholy
of all possible occurrences, in your interesting
and authentic history, there is none that occa¬
sions such deep and heart rending grief, as the
decline and fall of your renowned and mighty
empires. Where is the reader who can contem¬
plate without emotion, the disastrous events by
which the great Dynasties of the .world have
been extinguished ? While wandering, in imagi¬
nation, among the gigantic ruins of states and em¬
pires, and marking the tremendous convulsions
that wrought their overthrow, the bosom of the
melancholy inquirer swells with sympathy com¬
mensurate to the surrounding desolation. King¬
doms, principalities and powers, have each had
their rise, their progress, and their downfall—
each in its turn has swayed a potent sceptre—
each has returned to its primeval nothingness.
And thus did it fare with the empire of their
high mightinesses, at the Manhattoes, under
the peaceful reign of Walter the Doubter—the