 the façade of a palace double its size lent to this
heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are
utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times
be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from the mockery of a place too smiling
for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged.
Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently
learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming
and fair.
    Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is
not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in
Thule: human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with
external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young.
The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened
sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is
absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And
ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the
vineyards and myrtle-gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and
Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand-dunes of
Scheveningen.
    The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to
wander on Egdon: he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he
laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far
subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest
feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually
reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of
intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then
Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its
friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the
hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are
vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and
disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like
this.
    It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature - neither
ghastly, hateful, nor ugly: neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like
man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its
swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude
seemed
