Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 3.djvu/170

 out of the windows. The only inhabitants of a town capable of containing ten thousand inhabitants, were a few friars who resided in a miserable ruin which had once been a beautiful convent. They were the first negro friars I had ever seen; their cowls were as black as their faces, and their hair grey and woolly. I concluded they had adopted this mode of life as being the laziest; but I could not discover by what means they could gain a livelihood, for there were none to give them any thing in charity.

The appearance of these poor men, added infinitely to the necromantic character of the whole melancholy scene. There was a beauty, a loveliness, in these venerable ruins, which delighted me. There was a solemn silence in the town; but there was a small, still voice, that said to me: "London may one day be the same—and Paris; and you and your children's children, will all have lived and had their loves and adventures; but who will the wretched