ed the way, and
wandered in the pathless desert of the grey rocks. Fantastic, hideous,
they beset him wherever he turned, piled up into strange shapes, pricked
with sharp peaks, assuming the appearance of goblin towers, swelling into
a vague dome like a fairy rath, huge and terrible. And as one dream faded
into another, so these last fancies were perhaps the most tormenting and
persistent; the rocky avenues became the camp and fortalice of some
half-human, malignant race who swarmed in hiding, ready to bear him away
into the heart of their horrible hills. It was awful to think that all
his goings were surrounded, that in the darkness he was watched and
surveyed, that every step but led him deeper and deeper into the
labyrinth.

When, of an evening, he was secure in his room, the blind drawn down and
the gas flaring, he made vigorous efforts toward sanity. It was not of
his free will that he allowed terror to overmaster him, and he desired
nothing better than a placid and harmless life, full of work and clear
thinking. He knew that he deluded himself with imagination, that he had
been walking through London suburbs and not through Pandemonium, and that
if he could but unlock his bureau all those ugly forms would be resolved
into the mist. But it was hard to say if he consoled himself effectually
with such reflections, for the return to common sense meant also the
return to the sharp pangs of defeat. It recalled him to the bitter theme
of his own inefficiency, to the thought that he only desired one thing
of life, and that this was denied him. He was willing to endure the
austerities of a monk in a severe cloister, to suffer cold, to be hungry,
to be lonely and friendless, to forbear all the consolation of friendly
speech, and to be glad of all these things, if only he might be allowed
to illuminate the manuscript in quietness. It seemed a hideous
insufferable cruelty, that he should so fervently desire that which he
could never gain.

He was led back to the old conclusion; he had lost the sense of humanity,
he was wretched because he was an alien and a stranger amongst citizens.
It seemed probable that the enthusiasm of literature, as he understood
it, the fervent desire for the fine art, had in it something of the
inhuman, and dissevered the enthusiast from his fellow-creatures. It was
possible that the barbarian suspected as much, that by some slow
process of rumination he had arrived at his fixed and inveterate
impr