AUTHORS REFERRED TO IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK.

RUINS OF ANCIENT CITIES.

Of chance or change, oh! let not man complain;
Else shall he never, never, cease to wail;
For from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Rears his lone cottage in the silent dale,
All feel the assault of fortune's fickle gale.
Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doom'd;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale;
And gulfs the mountains' mighty mass entomb'd;

And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloom'd.
BEATTIE.

ABYDOS.

THIS city stood on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, now called the Dardanelles, opposite to the city of Sestos, on the European side, the distance from one to the other being about two miles. Abydos was built by the Milesians, and became greatly celebrated from the circumstance that here Xerxes built his bridge over the Hellespont; also for the passion of Hero and Leander.

Philip, king of Macedon, laid siege to this city; and nothing at that time generally practised in the assaulting or defending of cities was omitted. No place, say historians, ever held out with greater obstinacy; which might be said, indeed, on the side of the besieged, to have risen at length to fury and brutality. Confiding in the strength of their fortifications, they repulsed with the utmost vigour the approaches of the Macedonians. Finding, however, that the outer wall of the city was sapped, and that the Macedonians had carried their mines under the inner one, they finally sent deputies to Philip, offerVOL. I.-B