moths, too: they blunder against my face, and dash red trails of fire off my cigarette; so busily they spin about the darkness. Sadducismus triumphatus! Yes, truly: here are little, white spirits awake and at some faery work; white, as heather upon the Cornish cliffs is white, and all innocent, rare things in heaven and earth. There is nothing dreadful, it seems, about this night, and this place; no glorious fury of evil spirits, doing foul and ugly things; only the quiet town asleep under a wild sky, and gentle creatures of the night moving about ancient places. And the wind rises, with a sound of the sea, murmuring over the earth and sighing away to the sea: the trembling sea, beyond the downs, which steals into the land by great creeks and glimmering channels; with swaying, taper masts along them, and lantern lights upon black barges. Certainly, this is no Lucretian night: not that tremendous
Noctivagæque faces cæli, flammæque volantes.
Rather, it reminds me of the Miltonic night, which is peopled alluringly with
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress:"
a Miltonic night, and a Shakespearean dawn; for the white morning has just peered along the horizon, white morning, with dusky flames behind it; and the spirits, the visions, vanish away, "following darkness, like a dream."
The streets are very still, with that silence of sleeping cities, which seems ready to start into confused cries; as though theSmiter