that it destroyed a trophy to make a triumph. There is the true
barbaric touch in this oblivion of what Jerusalem would look like a
century after, or a year after, or even the day after. It is this
which distinguishes the savage tribe on the march after a victory from
the civilised army establishing a government, even if it be a tyranny.
Hence the very effect of it, like the effect of the whole Prussian
adventure in history, remains something negative and even nihilistic.
The Christians made the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Moslems
made the Mosque of Omar; but this is what the most scientific
culture made at the end of the great century of science.
It made an enormous hole. The only positive contribution of
the nineteenth century to the spot is an unnaturally ugly clock,
at the top of an ornamental tower, or a tower that was meant to
be ornamental. It was erected, I believe, to commemorate the reign
of Abdul Hamid; and it seems perfectly adapted to its purpose,
like one of Sir William Watson's sonnets on the same subject.
But this object only adds a touch of triviality to the much more
tremendous negative effect of the gap by the gate. That remains a parable
as well as a puzzle, under all the changing skies of day and night;
with the shadows that gather tinder the narrow Gate of Humility;
and beside it, blank as daybreak and abrupt as an abyss, the broad
road that has led already to destruction.

The gap remains like a gash, a sort of wound in the walls; but it
only strengthens by contrast the general sense of their continuity.
Save this one angle where the nineteenth century has entered,
the vague impression of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rather
deepens than dies away. It is supported more than many would suppose
even by the figures that appear in the gateways or pass in procession
under the walls. The brown Franciscans and the white Dominicans