Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/46

tation; and thus, though surrounded at Constantinople, by scenes of much interest to the "classical scholar," I had cast aside their associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my face to the "shining Orient," forgetful of old Greece, and all the pure wealth she has left to this matter-of-fact-ridden world. But it happened to me one day to mount the high grounds overhanging the streets of Pera; I sated my eyes with the pomps of the city, and its crowded waters, and then I looked over where Scutari lay half veiled in her mournful cypresses; I looked yet farther, and higher, and saw in the heavens a silvery cloud that stood fast, and still against the breeze; it was pure, and dazzling white as might be the veil of Cytherea, yet touched with fire, as though from beneath, the loving eyes of an immortal were shining through and through. I knew the bearing, but had enormously misjudged its distance, and underrated its height, and so it was as a sign and a testimony—almost as a call from the neglected gods, that now I saw and acknowledged the snowy crown of the Mysian Olympus!