After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiæ, 
of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks
of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down 
the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a 
force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting 
character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, 
and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, 
in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid 
them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring 
history and a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries 
flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy 
inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries 
bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare 
name (which they spell wrong) -- no history, no tradition, no 
poetry -- nothing that can give it even a passing interest. 
What may be left of General Grant's great name forty centuries 
hence? This -- in the Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, possibly: 

     "URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT -- popular poet of ancient times in 
     the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. 
     Some authors say flourished about A. D. 742; but the learned 
     Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, 
     the English poet, and flourished about A. D. 1328, some three 
     centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote 
     'Rock me to Sleep, Mother.'" 

   These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.