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AN ENGLISH EVENING 25!) nearly to the roof, having in its tracery a large and beautiful wheel. Λ11 was practically perfect, it being now used as a mosque, except two decapitated towers, on one of which was a minaret. As I wandered round the building at every step I took I was more and more surprised at the grace and the exuberance of its ornament. From the bottom to the top it was rough with flowers and mouldings. As we lingered looking at it we felt that the light was failing, and we presently turned away and proceeded to one of the bastions. Here Captain Scott showed me a deep well or opening, at the bottom of which is now the tomb of a Turkish warrior, painted red and green like a child's toy locomotive ; but tradition says—a tradition which is alive to-day — that the Venetians during the siege had in it a revolving wheel armed with knives, on which they threw the Turks as they scaled the wall, till the hollow below was choked with dismembered bodies. From this spot I turned to take another look at the cathedral. I saw it under a new aspect. It rose out of a wilderness of desolate stones and grasses into the wan dimness of a weeping English evening, making me notice for the first time its colour—a curious tawny yellow, like the reddish parts of a lion. The broken towers, the pinnacles still perfect, the long line of carved windows and of buttresses— close to these, under their shadow, were dwellings and human beings ; but it seemed to the imagination s 2

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