Anyone coming from Europe with so much interest centring in the Middle Ages has to accustom the eyes to a new focus. It is as if he were to come from a well-kept garden to life in mid-ocean, stretching the eyes over a waste of waters. Everything is so old in the East; and being so old, is apt to be fragmentary. Civilizations come and go; nations have their rise, their period of prosperity, and then they disappear...