It
was not a place that I would have chosen for a summer sojourn; the sense
of a fly-blown past must have become a vivid part of future experience,
and yet I could imagine that if one were born to it, and were young and
hopeful, and had some one to share one's youth and hope, that Spanish
street, which was all there was of that Spanish town, might have had its
charm. I do not say that even for age there was not a railway station by
which one might have got away, though there was no sign of any trains
arriving or departing--perhaps because it was not one o'clock in the
morning, which is the favorite hour of departure for Spanish trains.
When we turned to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of
Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the
familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness.
Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast
stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft
and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may
unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the
whole world to tower up in from the level at its feet.
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