FIRST NOVELS 95 



those who perished in those dark days, done to death by 

 treachery at the gate. Heap up the ashes upon them ; 

 hide them out of sight ! Yet, deep as it lies hidden, 

 heavy and dull and impenetrable as the crust may be, 

 there shall come a time when the light of the sun, seen 

 through a little crevice, shall pour in its brilliance upon 

 them, and shall exhibit these chambers of imagery to the 

 man walking in day-time. He shall awake, and shall walk 

 through those chambers he builded in the olden times ; 

 and the pictures upon the walls shall pierce his soul. 



* With innumerable hopes and fears, with hunger and 

 thirst, with the pangs of birth and death, innumerable 

 multitudes of the tiniest creatures, living through vast 

 periods of time, slowly built up from the lower ocean's bed 

 those firm and rolling downs of chalk which are now the 

 homes of men. How slowly events happen ! How im- 

 possible it is to note even to ourselves the imperceptible 

 agencies, the countless multitudes of thoughts and im- 

 pulses, " the dreams in the midst of business," which by 

 slow degrees wear away our former selves, and change us 

 without our knowing it ! 



' He could not have told why, he hid it from himself 

 at first ; but it forced itself by slow degrees upon him, this 

 sickly odour of the Tyrian purple.' 



There is also a noticeable, exuberant and flowing 

 passage of this kind on scarlet. 



The development of the story is conventional and of 

 no interest. How remote the book is from the real 

 Jefferies, if not from the surface of the man in 1874, can 

 be guessed from the unreality of such reflections as 

 this : 



' It is a singular fact in physiology that if a woman is 

 neither very beautiful nor very attractive, nor in any way 

 likely to get married herself, she is pretty sure to dote on 

 her brother. . . .' 



And this : 



' There's an eclat about mischief that virtue sighs for in 

 vain.' 



