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THE END OF HUMAN EFFORT 2C9 myself, like some deep personal sorrow, which I could not understand till I had sat down alone, and thought over it. I did sit down on the slope of the silent ramparts, and waited for my impressions to separate themselves and become distinct to me. The general aspect of everything I remembered so vividly, that it no longer distracted me by the details of its unexplored novelty. The consequence was that a number of new impressions, which I had not before been sufficiently at rest to realise, one by one became clear to my consciousness. Clearer than ever was the sense of the life, the strength, and the splendour —layer upon layer of civilisation—of which this town was the tomb ; and along with this sense there now came another—a sense of its present stillness, so deep that one's ears tingled in it. I then became aware that moving about the solitude, here and there, were some sheep with a Turkish shepherd, and that a few Turkish children were playing on the fallen palaces. Now and again came a faint human voice, and once the bark of a far-off solitary dog ; but clearer than all, and more eloquent than all, and seeming as though it were the silence itself speak-ing, over fallen palace and over dismantled rampart sounded at long intervals the rustle of the breaking sea. I roused myself by-and-by ; I rose, and moved towards the cathedral, wishing to take a photo-graph of it. As I approached it I became involved again in the sunken lanes with which I already had

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