These ruins arc the most extraordinary and stupendous in the world, alike remarkable for extent and magnifi cence, and the romantic, wild, and desolate spot on which they are found. Architecture seems to have lavished all her ornaments, and displayed all her skill, in the construc tinn and decoration of those splendid edifices, the very fragments of which are so massy and imposing. " We had scarcely passed," says Mr. Wood, " these venerable buildings, (the sepulchres of the ancient Palmyrenes,) when the hills opening, discovered to us, all at once, the greatest quantity of ruins we had ever seen ; and behind them, towards the Euphrates, a flat waste, as far as the eye could reach, without any object which showed either life or motion. It is scarce possible to imagine any thing more striking than this view. So great a number of Corinthian pillars, with so little wall or solid building, af forded a most romantic variety of prospect." A similar account is given by Mr. Bruce, who visited these ruins before he penetrated into Abyssinia. " When we arrived at the top the hill," says he, "there opened before us the most astonishing, stupendous sight that perhaps ever ap peared to mortal eyes. The whole plain below, which was very exten.,ive, was covered so thick with magnifi cent buildings, as that one seemed to touch t he other, all of fine proportions, all of agreeable forms, all composed of white stone, which at that distance appeared like marble. At the end of it stood the palate of the Sun, a building worthy to close so magnificent a scene." Of these extraordinary ruins, it is impos'iible, in this place, to give any thing like an adequate account. " We sometimes find a palace," says NI. Volney, " of which nothing remains but the courts and walls ; sometimes a temple, whose peristyle is half thrown down ; and now a portico, a gallery, or triumphal arch. Here stand groups of columns, whose symmetry is destroyed by the fall of many of them ; there we see them ranged in rows of such length, that, similar to rows of trees, they deceive the sight, and assume the appearance of continued walls.
On which side soever we look, the earth is strewed with vast stones, half buried, with broken entablatures, damag ed capitals, mutilated friezes, disfigured reliefs, effaced sculptures, violated tombs, and altars defiled by mud." These ruins, which consist chiefly of temples, palaces, and public edifices, built mostly of white marble, occupy an area of three miles in circumference ; but the ancient city, the greater part of which has now disappeared, is allowed to have extended to nearly four times that space. For a farther account of this interesting place, we refer the reader to Mr. Wood's curious publication, which is accompanied with fifty plates ; and to the article CIVIL ARCHITECTURE, in this work, which contains, with other notices, a very minute account of the Temple of the Sun, the most stupendous and the most entire of these vener able remains.
The abject and sordid character of the present inhabit ants of this city,—about thirty Arab families, who live in huts erected in the court of the Temple of the Sun,—af ford a striking and humiliating contrast to the splendid and massy ruins by which they are surrounded. These people cultivate a few olive trees, and as much corn as is neces sary for their subsistence, in any vacant spot that can be found amid the dilapidations of the place ; they are far removed from any inhabited district, and have no other communication with the living world, than what consists in a visit, rather of a commercial kind, paid once in two or three months, to some of the nearest villages. The cara vans which travel between the Euphrates and Aleppo, keep considerably to the eastward of Palmyra—a place now so neglected, but once the very centre of the trade of the eastern world.
See Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, and the article CIVIL ARCHITECTURE, ut supra ; Bruce's Travels, (Introduc tion ;) Volney's Travels, E.9"c.; and Swinton's Explications of the Inscriptions at Palmyra. Some notices may also be found in Pliny, Hist. Xat. lib. v. ; in Josephus ; the :indent Univ. Hist. ; and Gibbon's Roman History.
(T. N.)