that had been raised, they were a palladium that had been rescued.
These were the things that had again been saved from chaos,
as they were saved at Salamis and Lepanto; and I knew what had
saved them or at least in what formation they had been saved.
I knew that these scattered splendours of antiquity would hardly
have descended to us at all, to be endangered or delivered,
if all that pagan world had not crystallised into Christendom.

Crossing seas as smooth as pavements inlaid with turquoise
and lapis lazuli, and relieved with marble mountains as clear
and famous as marble statues, it was easy to feel all that had
been pure and radiant even in the long evening of paganism;
but that did not make me forget what strong stars had comforted
the inevitable night. The historical moral was the same whether
these marble outlines were merely "the isles" seen afar off like
sunset clouds by the Hebrew prophets, or were felt indeed as Hellas,
the great archipelago of arts and arms praised by the Greek poets;
the historic heritage of both descended only to the Greek Fathers.
In those wild times and places, the thing that preserved both was
the only thing that would have permanently preserved either.
It was but part of the same story when we passed the hoary
hills that held the primeval culture of Crete, and remembered
that it may well have been the first home of the Philistines.
It mattered the less by now whether the pagans were best
represented by Poseidon the deity or by Dagon the demon.
It mattered the less what gods had blessed the Greeks in their youth
and liberty; for I knew what god had blessed them in their despair.
I knew by what sign they had survived the long slavery under
Ottoman orientalism; and upon what name they had called in the darkness,
when there was no light but the horned moon of Mahound.