A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 85 



with it ? Would he have thought any better now 

 of the crime which spUt the Anglo-Saxon peoples in 

 two, or of his countrymen who fined and imprisoned 

 him for opening a subscription for the widows and 

 orphans of the Americans " murdered by the King's 

 troops at Lexington and Concord " ? 



Tjhe rooks are spreading out across the sky as 

 they sail from their nests to the distant pastiures. 

 As the light ripens, the view enlarges of greater 

 London stretching away to the north. Like the 

 arms of a great octopus, its fringes strike far into 

 the open land. Farther in, caught between them, 

 rises bravely many a pleasant grove ; parks, open 

 spaces, and even fields gleam a fitful green among the 

 bricks in the morning light — but surrounded all; 

 doomed, injected morsels waiting to be digested at 

 leisure, to serve the strenuous purposes of another 

 life. And yet only the outer suburban zone is 

 visible here — a land of beauty without refinement, 

 of wealth without distinction ; a land of groves and 

 spires and villas hedged round with reformatories, 

 schools, and asylums. And everywhere, from horizon 

 to horizon, the unfinished brick and timber of the 

 builder, emblems of the ever-rising flood, of a move- 

 ment of which the springs are at the ends of the earth, 

 of a hfe which takes toU of every land under heaven. 



Now at last, away in the north-east, the fiery 

 red rim of the sun shows above the horizon. There 

 has been no gorgeous preparatory display, no massing 

 of shades and colours for the opening ceremony. 

 With scarce an anticipatory flush he rises full into 

 a grey, expressionless sky, and a moment afterward 

 disap|>ears into a bank of fog which hangs on the 

 horizon over the Essex marshes. A fitting tribute. 



