om, and to succour
those who come to us. It would be a sign of disrespect to our church
if people came here merely to see the ancient remains."

I for my part, being of the old though also of the new, was eager
to climb the steep stone way along which in ancient days had ridden
crusaders and mediaeval warriors. Great trees now grew through the
rent wall of the cathedral, and slender birches grew straight up in
the nave to the eternal roof which had supplanted that of time--to
heaven itself....

But alas for romance, the Russians are restoring the church, clearing
away the old stones, chopping down the trees. An ikon has been set up
within the old building, and the latter is already a place of worship.
Once more: to the eye of a monk a ruined temple is somewhat of an
insult to God. There is no fond antiquarianism; all the old Latin
inscriptions and bas-reliefs that have been found have been mortared
together at random into one wall; all the human bones that have been
unearthed, and they are many, have been thrown unceremoniously into an
open box. Even on the bare white ribs and ancient crumbling skulls,
bourgeois visitors have written their twentieth-century names. Some
ancient skeletons have been preserved in a case from pre-Mahometan
times, and under them is written:

With love, we ask you, look upon us.
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