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 career, closes his treatise with these words: 

“There was in the world as Caesar found it the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendor and glory; but little soul, still less taste, and least of all, joy in and through life.  Truly it was an old world, and even Caesar’s genial patriotism could not make it young again.  The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended.  Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when after long historical night the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course toward new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Caesar had sprung up,—­many who owed