You Are Not Called Upon To "Drop A
Tear" Over The Tomb Of "The Once Brilliant" Anybody, Or To Pay
Your "Tribute Of Respect" To Anything Dead Or Alive.
There are no
Servian or Bulgarian litterateurs with whom it would be positively
disgraceful not to form an acquaintance;
You have no staring, no
praising to get through; the only public building of any interest
that lies on the road is of modern date, but is said to be a good
specimen of Oriental architecture; it is of a pyramidical shape,
and is made up of thirty thousand skulls, contributed by the
rebellious Servians in the early part (I believe) of this century:
I am not at all sure of my date, but I fancy it was in the year
1806 that the first skull was laid. I am ashamed to say that in
the darkness of the early morning we unknowingly went by the
neighbourhood of this triumph of art, and so basely got off from
admiring "the simple grandeur of the architect's conception," and
"the exquisite beauty of the fretwork."
There being no "lions," we ought at least to have met with a few
perils, but the only robbers we saw anything of had been long since
dead and gone. The poor fellows had been impaled upon high poles,
and so propped up by the transverse spokes beneath them, that their
skeletons, clothed with some white, wax-like remains of flesh,
still sat up lolling in the sunshine, and listlessly stared without
eyes.
One day it seemed to me that our path was a little more rugged than
usual, and I found that I was deserving for myself the title of
Sabalkansky, or "Transcender of the Balcan." The truth is, that,
as a military barrier, the Balcan is a fabulous mountain. Such
seems to be the view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the
east with the eye of a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia Pass,
which I followed, there is no narrow defile, and no ascent
sufficiently difficult to stop, or delay for long time, a train of
siege artillery.
Before we reached Adrianople, Methley had been seized with we knew
not what ailment, and when we had taken up our quarters in the city
he was cast to the very earth by sickness. Adrianople enjoyed an
English consul, and I felt sure that, in Eastern phrase, his house
would cease to be his house, and would become the house of my sick
comrade. I should have judged rightly under ordinary
circumstances, but the levelling plague was abroad, and the dread
of it had dominion over the consular mind. So now (whether dying
or not, one could hardly tell), upon a quilt stretched out along
the floor, there lay the best hope of an ancient line, without the
material aids to comfort of even the humblest sort, and (sad to
say) without the consolation of a friend, or even a comrade worth
having. I have a notion that tenderness and pity are affections
occasioned in some measure by living within doors; certainly, at
the time I speak of, the open-air life which I have been leading,
or the wayfaring hardships of the journey, had so strangely blunted
me, that I felt intolerant of illness, and looked down upon my
companion as if the poor fellow in falling ill had betrayed a want
of spirit.
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