And around them all is a mighty
mountain-ring at least 3 miles high, but which, to an eye looking from
the centre of our vast city, could not appear to be more than five or
six hundred feet. Enormous circus, where mighty Rome herself in her
palmiest days, though increased tenfold, would have no reason to
complain for want of room!"
He stopped for a few seconds, perhaps to take breath, and then resumed:
"Oh what an abode of serene happiness could be constructed within this
shadow-fringed ring of the mighty mountains! O blessed refuge,
unassailable by aught of human ills! What a calm unruffled life could be
enjoyed within thy hallowed precincts, even by those cynics, those
haters of humanity, those disgusted reconstructors of society, those
misanthropes and misogynists old and young, who are continually writing
whining verses in odd corners of the newspapers!"
"Right at last, Ardan, my boy!" cried M'Nicholl, quietly rubbing the
glass of his spectacles; "I should like to see the whole lot of them
carted in there without a moment's delay!"
"It couldn't hold the half of them!" observed Barbican drily.
[Footnote D: BALTIMORE GUN CLUB, pp. 295 _et seq._]
CHAPTER XVIII.
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