We were like you; you will be like us.
The recommendation is unavailing. The bones have been picked up,
passed from hand to hand, scrawled upon, joked over. They are probably
the remains of strong warriors and early Christians, and one can
imagine with what peculiar sensations they, in their day, would have
regarded this irreverence to their bones could they but have looked
forward a thousand years or so.
It seemed to me, looking out from the watch-tower of Iver over the
diminished monastery buildings and the vast and glorious sea, on that
which must change and on that which in all ages remains ever the same,
some reverence might have been begotten for that in the past which
shows what we shall be in the future. The monks might have spared the
bones and buried them; they might have left the ruins as they were.
I am told that in a few years the work of restoration will be
completely achieved, services will be held regularly on the mountain
top, and peasant pilgrims will gladly, if patiently, climb morning and
evening up the stone way to the church, having no thoughts of any time
but that in which they are worshipping. The Russian is racially young.
He is in the morning and full of prophecy; only in the evening will
his eye linger here in the emotions of romance.
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