A GREAT FROST 235 



holes and crevices in the hedges, their little hearts 

 beating more languidly each hour, their eyes glazing, 

 until stiff and dead they dropped from their perches. 

 And 1 was on the summit of the hill among the rude 

 granite castles and sacred places of men who had 

 their day on this earth thousands and thousands of 

 years ago. Here there are great blocks and slabs of 

 granite which have been artificially hollowed into 

 basins for what purpose, who shall say ? The rain 

 falls and fills them to the brim with crystal-clear water, 

 and in summer the birds drink and bathe in these 

 basins. But they were doubtless made for another, 

 possibly for some dreadful, purpose. Perhaps they 

 were filled from time to time with the blood of captive 

 men sacrificed on the hill-top to some awful god of 

 the ancient days. Now it seemed to me, out there in 

 spirit on the hill, that the darkest imaginings of men 

 the blackest phantom or image of himself which 

 he has sacrificed to was not so dark as this dreadful 

 unintelligible and unintelligent power that made us, 

 in which we live and move and have our being. 



It was this terrible aspect of nature, as I had seen 

 it on that evening, which was uppermost in the mind 

 of the race at an earlier stage of culture before man's 

 cunning brain had found out so many inventions and 

 created new and pleasant conditions for his own 

 species. When animistic promptings survive in him 

 he is now apt to personify nature in its milder bene- 

 ficent aspects. Such personifications, fanciful and 

 religious at the same time, are common in our 

 imaginative writers, especially in the poets, but, when 





