Behind us, by those frowning walls, a slight sound is borne upon the night wind. Its voice whispers through the branches of the many cypress-trees. It calls in gentle, insistent tones, and thousands answer by obeying it. They come from out the shadows of the broken walls, they move silently among the tumbled tombstones. Silently they mount the ramparts and gaze with serene, far-seeing eyes, out over the sleeping city. Greeks of all ages, Turks who fell before them, fearless Franks, brave Normans, and stout-hearted Saxons, hold their nocturnal watch.
“The Oracle spoke true—the City prospers,” whispers Byzas the founder. “It is well!”
“The descendants of the people that I loved are happy and at peace,” comes from John Comnenus. “It is well!”
“The Crescent shines upon the capital of a strong Empire—the sons of Othman rule wisely,” murmurs the Conqueror Mahomed. “It is well!”
The Frank looks back upon the part he played in the history of this sleeping city. His deeds were not done in vain. “It is well.”
A silent group looks out over the city. Britons who followed as captives in the train of Theodosius, Normans who had camped outside the city walls under the banner of the Cross, Saxons and Danes who had met them in the field and on the ramparts with their battle-axes. They have followed with eager eyes the history of those that came after them. They saw the red cross of St. George’s ensign float above the first ships that Queen Elizabeth had sent here. They saw that flag extended to denote the union of races that make up their nation, and watched it sail away up the narrow channel of the Bosphorus to the Crimea. These shades of departed Varangians, who fought till their last breath for an expiring cause, for an Empire whose sons had lost the art of war, have watched the rise of yet another Empire in the West in that dear land they sailed from. They have followed closely the history of that Empire, and a sigh goes from them, “Is it well?”
ENVOI
GENTLE travellers! our journey is at an end, and nothing remains to Author and Artist but the pleasant recollection of your company and the kindly interest you were pleased to show.
The sun has risen upon another day, but that is no reason why the doings of a previous one should be forgotten. The ships that bear our travellers to sea, or maybe the train on the Roumelian Railway, will soon break up a very pleasant party. So before we go let us ask you to retain a kindly memory of this journey, and of the city walls that suggested it. We ask it for a particular reason. A rumour is afloat, and has not as yet been contradicted, that these old walls are doomed, behind whose sheltering care Europe and the different nations to which you belong worked out their destiny. But for these walls what might the state of Europe be to-day? Wave after wave of Asiatic aggression here spent its fury, until in time the nation that grew up within them lost the power of defence, and accordingly ceased to be.
But these walls still stand, if only as relics of an historic and romantic past. And they are doomed. Already the pick is at work upon the Theodosian walls, near the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The object is to sell the material in order to provide the army of the new Turkish Empire with means of defence and offence. But these walls have served their purpose, their stones have now no value but that to which their history entitles them.