The changes in appearances of an object which are due to changes in the intervening medium will not affect, or will affect only very slightly, the appearances from
places close to the object.
The next
place the guide took us to in the holy church was an altar dedicated to the Roman soldier who was of the military guard that attended at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who--when the vail of the Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead flitted about the streets of Jerusalem--shook with fear and said, "Surely this was the Son of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in full view of the crucified Saviour--in full sight and hearing of all the marvels that were transpiring far and wide about the circumference of the Hill of Calvary.
The village had a very strong smell, and a curious habit of building boats in the street between intervals of detached cottages; a helpless, muddy, fishy little
place. I walked through it rapidly; turned inland a few hundred yards; ascended some rising ground; and discerned, in the dim twilight, four small lonesome villas standing in pairs, with a shed and a saw-pit on one side, and a few shells of unfinished houses on the other.
Ah, It's a sort of lost corner, this
place. Not like London--is it, sir?
'how wet she is, and that the damp streets are not a
place for her?'
He writes me that he is going to buy this
place from the church trustees and keep it to spend our summer vacations in.
I was not fixed indeed; 'tis impossible to describe the terror of my mind, when I was first brought in, and when I looked around upon all the horrors of that dismal
place. I looked on myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of but of going out of the world, and that with the utmost infamy: the hellish noise, the roaring, swearing, and clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful crowd of afflicting things that I saw there, joined together to make the
place seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it.
"There's one feature of the
place I might introduce you to if you care for a stroll," he said presently.
The first
place to be met with in travelling along the coast of Africa is Rondelo, situate over against Toro, and celebrated for the same miraculous passage.
I had noticed that he always advanced with his dim torch to where he could
place the food within my reach and as he stooped to
place it upon the floor his head was about on a level with my breast.
This was the only
place where he showed distinct reverence.
When I found this, I resolved to quit the
place that I had hitherto inhabited, to seek for one where the few wants I experienced would be more easily satisfied.