ht and now
to left, where the foothold looked a little firmer, I began to doubt
whether there was strength enough left to carry me an hour higher. At
length the rock-slope came suddenly to an end, and I stepped out upon
the almost level snow at the top of it, coming at the same time into the
clouds, which naturally clung to the colder surfaces. A violent west
wind was blowing, and the temperature must have been pretty low, for a
big icicle at once enveloped the lower half of my face, and did not melt
till I got to the bottom of the cone four hours afterwards. Unluckily I
was very thinly clad, the stout tweed coat reserved for such occasions
having been stolen on a Russian railway. The only expedient to be tried
against the piercing cold was to tighten in my loose light coat by
winding around the waist a Spanish _faja_, or scarf, which I had brought
up to use in case of need as a neck wrapper. Its bright purple looked
odd enough in such surroundings, but as there was nobody there to
notice, appearances did not much matter. In the mist, which was now
thick, the eye could pierce only some thirty yards ahead; so I walked on
over the snow five or six minutes, following the rise of its surface,
which was gentle, and fancying there might still be a good long way to
go. To mark the backward track I trailed the point of the ice-axe along
behind me in the soft snow, for there was no longer any landmark; all
was cloud on every side. Suddenly to my astonishment the ground began to
fall away to the north; I stopped; a puff of wind drove off the mists on
one side, the opposite side to that by which I had come, and showed the
Araxes plain at an abysmal depth below. It was the top of Ararat.

THE WORK OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

From 'The Holy Roman Empire'

No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years--no one,
above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon--can believe
it possible for any State, however great her energy and material
resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome; to
gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality
has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it
is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle
Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and
nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome
[Mommsen], after summing up the results to the world of his hero's