HISTORY AT DOVER 257 



makes a lane of silvery glory across the Channel ; 

 when the winking light from Cape Grisnez shows where 

 the French coast lies, and the glow from the lighthouse 

 on the Admiralty Pier marks the harbour at his feet ; 

 when Dover lamps burn yellow beside the moonrays, 

 and the high-road to London lies stark and white in the 

 valley of the Dour, then may the sentry on his eyrie 

 hear, between the ghostly tapping of the halyards on 

 the flagstaff, the tramp of the ages. Forty centuries 

 looked down upon the French in Egypt ; the sentry on 

 Dover Castle looks upon nineteen hundred years of 

 invasion and foreign expeditions. There, where 

 Dover streets now stand, rode Csesar's galleys and there 

 our ancestors bled for their country. Down that white 

 highway, so still at this midnight hour, have marched 

 many generations of archers, men-at-arms, and soldiers 

 of a more recent era, to return, covered with wounds and 

 glory ; and across that shining sea have sailed fleets 

 innumerable. For a distance of four hundred feet 

 below him run a series of fortified galleries and 

 platforms, built in the Castle Keep or excavated through 

 the solid chalk down to sea-level ; while level with him, 

 rise the Western Heights, rich in heavy ordnance, 

 across the town. Here, then, is the end of the Dover 

 Road, looking out across the sea ; and he must needs 

 be dull of brain who does not perceive the epic fitness 

 of its ending. 



THE END 



