text: {A} 'Tis a pleasant thing to turn from the present with its turmoil and its noise its clank of engines and its pallid artizans its political strife and its social disorganization to the calm and quiet records of the past--to the contemplation of bygone greatness: of kingdoms which have passed away --of cities whose site is marked only by the mouldering column and the time-worn wall--of men with whose name the world once rang but whose very tombs are now unknown