Entering Soon After, I Passed Amongst The Dust And Rubbish It Had
Left, Affrighted By Viewing The Extent Of The Devastation, For At
Least A Quarter Of The City Had Been Destroyed.
There was little in
the appearance of fallen bricks and stacks of chimneys to allure the
imagination into soothing melancholy reveries; nothing to attract
the eye of taste, but much to afflict the benevolent heart.
The
depredations of time have always something in them to employ the
fancy, or lead to musing on subjects which, withdrawing the mind
from objects of sense, seem to give it new dignity; but here I was
treading on live ashes. The sufferers were still under the pressure
of the misery occasioned by this dreadful conflagration. I could
not take refuge in the thought: they suffered, but they are no
more! a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind when sympathy
rises to anguish. I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the
hotel recommended to me, that I might avert my eyes and snap the
train of thinking which had sent me into all the corners of the city
in search of houseless heads.
This morning I have been walking round the town, till I am weary of
observing the ravages. I had often heard the Danes, even those who
had seen Paris and London, speak of Copenhagen with rapture.
Certainly I have seen it in a very disadvantageous light, some of
the best streets having been burnt, and the whole place thrown into
confusion.
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