In Egypt, travelers tell us about the destruction of palaces by
vandals and Huns. The greatest architects and artists the world
has ever known toiled upon the palace, and made it as perfect
as a red rose; then came along these vandals--they ripped out
carvings of angels and seraphs, that held a beauty that would
pierce an artist’s heart, and with these carvings boiled their
kettles. They pulled down the statues of Phidias and burned them
into lime. They took the very stones of a palace and built them
into hundreds of mean and squalid hovels. Soon where had been a
structure for the gods, there stood hovels unfit for beasts.
In the same way many men treat the precious things of life and religion.
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