mountain-shadow. In lonely places there is The 



Com 

 of Dusk. 



something ominous, menacing in the swift jJPJJ 11 ?? 



approach of the early winter -dusk, further 

 gloomed perhaps by the oncome of snow or 

 rain or of a soughing wind moving out of low 

 congregated cloud. In thronged streets it is 

 not less swift, not less sombre, but the falling 

 veils have hardly been secretly unloosened 

 before they are punctuated by the white or 

 yellow flare of the street-lamps. Hardly is 

 breathing-space, there, between the stepping 

 out of day and the stepping into night. The 

 fear of darkness, which possesses towns like 

 a great dread, has broken the spell with ten 

 thousand lights : as the mind of man, which 

 likewise dreads the naked darkness of thought 

 and the white, remote, passionless stars of the 

 spirit, hastens to hide its shadowy dusks and 

 brooding nights with a myriad frail paper 

 lanterns that a flying hand of rain will ex- 

 tinguish or a breath of wind carry in a moment 

 to the outer darkness. 



But whatever hold upon the imagination 

 the winter dusk may have, however subtle a 

 spell there may be in the gloamings of autumn, 

 surely the coming of dusk has at no other time 

 the enchantment of the long midsummer eves. 

 It is then that one feels to the utmost the 

 magic influences of the dimsea or dimsee, to use 



189 



