en eyes straight
out, as though he had lately been stretched upon the corpse, but had
risen at the sound of movement, or some supposed word of friends
close by. His bread lies untasted near him, and the half-pint of
water--his day's portion--has been given to bathe the forehead of
his dying friend. They have stood together through the festival of
leave-taking from Peiraeus, through the battles of Epipolae, through
the retreat and the slaughter at the passage of the Asinarus. But
now it has come to this, and death has found the younger. Perhaps
the friend beside him remembers some cool wrestling-ground in
far-off Athens, or some procession up the steps of the Acropolis,
where first they met. Anyhow his fixed gaze now shows that he has
passed in thought at least beyond the hell around him. Not far
behind should be ranged groups of haggard men, with tattered clothes
and dulled or tigerish eyes, some dignified, some broken down by
grief; while here and there newly fallen corpses, and in one hideous
corner a great heap of abandoned dead, should point the ghastly
words of Thucydides: [Greek: ton nekron homou ep angelois
zunnenemenon.]

Every landscape has some moment of its own at which it should be
seen for the first time. Mediaeval cities, with their narrow streets
and solemn spires, demand the twilight of a summer night.
Mediterranean islands show their best in the haze of afternoon, when
sea and sky and headland are bathed in aerial blue, and the
mountains seem to be made of transparent amethyst. The first sight
of the Alps should be taken at sunset from some point of vantage,
like the terrace at Berne, or the castle walls of Salzburg. If these
fortunate moments be secured, all after knowledge of locality and
detail serves to fortify and deepen the impression of picturesque
harmony. The mind has then conceived a leading thought, which gives
ideal unity to scattered memories and invests the crude reality with
an aesthetic beauty. The lucky moment for the landscape of Girgenti
is half an hour past sunset in a golden afterglow. Landing at the
port named after Empedocles, having caught from the sea some
glimpses of temple-fronts emergent on green hill-slopes among
almond-trees, with Pindar's epithet of 'splendour-loving' in my
mind, I rode on such an evening up the path which leads across the
Drago to Girgenti. The way winds through deep-sunk lanes of rich
amber sandstone, hedged with cactus and dwarf-palm, and set with old