Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/696

688 where the lions were kept, and the dens out of which they came to the arena, where, lashed to fury, they waged their bloody contests with men. A sight of this old theater of horrors, once strangely enough the place of amusement to thousands, makes one thankful that his lot is cast in our humane and enlightened age. There is, however, enough of the wild beast left in our modern human life to modify the pride of our enlightenment and humanity, and to remind us of our kinship with the people who once delighted in the brutality and cruelty practiced in this amphitheater. In this respect our newspapers tell us a sad story. They would not be filled with the details of prize-fights, and discussions of the brutal perfections of prize-fighters, if such things did not please the brutal proclivities of a large class of readers.

Another interesting object in Arles is a long line of granite coffins, buried here for ages and discovered at last by excavations for a railroad just outside of the town. These houses of the dead are well preserved, but the dust and ashes once their tenants are lost and scattered to the winds.

An hour or two after leaving this quaint and sinuous old town, we were confronted at Marseilles by the blue and tideless waters of the Mediterranean, a sea charming in itself and made more charming by the poetry and eloquence it has inspired. Its deep blue waters sparkling under a summer sun and a half tropical sky, fanned by balmy breezes from Afric's golden sand, was in fine contrast with the snow-covered mountains and plains we had just left behind us. Only a few hours before reaching Marseilles we were in mid-winter; but now all at once we were greeted with the lemon and the orange, the olive and the oleander, all flourishing under the open sky. The transition was so sudden and so agreeable