Pharos and Pharillon by E.M. Forster

I

When the lively and somewhat spiteful Mrs. Eliza Fay landed at Alexandria in the summer of 1779 that city was at her lowest ebb. The glories of the antique had gone, the comforts of the modern had not arrived. Gone were the temples and statues, gone the palace of Cleopatra and the library of Callimachus, the Pharos had fallen and been succeeded by the feeble Pharillon, the Heptastadion had silted up; while the successors to these-the hotels, the clubs, the drainage system, the exquisite Municipal buildings-still slept in the unastonished womb of time.