GENTLE travellers! our journey is at an end, and nothing remains to Author and Artist but the pleasant recollection of your company and the kindly interest you were pleased to show.

The sun has risen upon another day, but that is no reason why the doings of a previous one should be forgotten. The ships that bear our travellers to sea, or maybe the train on the Roumelian Railway, will soon break up a very pleasant party. So before we go let us ask you to retain a kindly memory of this journey, and of the city walls that suggested it. We ask it for a particular reason. A rumour is afloat, and has not as yet been contradicted, that these old walls are doomed, behind whose sheltering care Europe and the different nations to which you belong worked out their destiny. But for these walls what might the state of Europe be to-day? Wave after wave of Asiatic aggression here spent its fury, until in time the nation that grew up within them lost the power of defence, and accordingly ceased to be.

But these walls still stand, if only as relics of an historic and romantic past. And they are doomed. Already the pick is at work upon the Theodosian walls, near the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus. The object is to sell the material in order to provide the army of the new Turkish Empire with means of defence and offence. But these walls have served their purpose, their stones have now no value but that to which their history entitles them.

Fellow-travellers—it may not be too late, it may yet be possible to save these landmarks that have led us through the maze of history and Romance to the present day, where with the best intentions a vigorous young government intends to inaugurate a new era by an act of vandalism.

The power of public opinion is great. Author and Artist suggest it as a means of saving the walls of an Imperial city to their friends and fellow-travellers—and so Farewell!