It is curious how history can line up before us like witnesses all in a row, and among the faces straining to speak, only one in ten, or twenty, does not stand there with mouth tightly sewn shut. The past is often mute, yet that which shouts to us in the present makes mockery of presentiment. I would indeed wager that each and every ruined monument is a testament to stupidity. Nothing of wisdom survives. Only the vainglorious travesties of pride and idiocy.
