And any one who wishes to understand the sense in which it is true has only to contemplate that fantasy and fallacy in stone; a gate with an open road beside it.
The quality I mean, however, is not merely in that particular contrast; as of a front door standing by itself in an open field.
It is also in the origin, the occasion and the whole story of the thing.
There is above all this supreme stamp of the barbarian; the sacrifice of the permanent to the temporary.

When the walls of the Holy City were overthrown for the glory of the German Emperor, it was hardly even for that everlasting glory which has been the vision and the temptation of great men.

It was for the glory of a single day.
It was something rather in the nature of a holiday than anything that could be even in the most vainglorious sense a heritage.
It did not in the ordinary sense make a monument, or even a trophy.
It destroyed a monument to make a procession.

We might almost say that it destroyed a trophy to make a triumph.

There is the true barbaric touch in this oblivion of what Jerusalem would look like a century after, or a year after, or even the day after.