and a final example

Gibbon really has a talent for reflecting on natural disasters. This is a thing of beauty:

“The stroke that agitates an ant-hill may crush the insect myriads in the dust; yet truth must extort a confession that man has industriously laboured for his own destruction. The institution of great cities, which include a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realizes the wish of Caligula that the Roman people had but one neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the earthquake of Antioch…. In these disasters, the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage or the tent of an Arab may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant…. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own head; a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edifices; and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by the innumerable fires which are necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great city. Instead of the mutual sympathy which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully experience the vices and passions which are released from the fear of punishment: the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and the earth often swallows the assassin, or the ravisher, in the consummation of their crimes.”