shine, and we hear more of
"the winds that would be howling at all hours" than of the brooding peace
and quiet of summer days. Charles Kingsley is less partial towards the
seasons, and cares less about the mysticism than the physical influences
of Nature.

In our own day Mr. George Meredith has reminded us of the big geniality
of the Earth; and the close relationship of the Earth and her moods with
those who live nearest to her has found a faithful observer in Mr. Hardy.

Stevenson differs from Meredith and Hardy in this. He looks at her
primarily with the eye of the artist. They look at her primarily with
the eye of the scientific philosopher.

Here is a twilight effect from _The Return of the Native_:--

"The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the
evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as
rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. . . . The place became full
of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to
sleep, the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night
its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus
unmoved during so many centuries, through the crises of so many
things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis--the
final overthrow. . . . Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon
Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without
showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity."

Contrast with this a twilight piece from Stevenson:--

"The sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, nameless changing colour,
dark and glossy like a serpent's back. The stars by innumerable
millions stuck boldly forth like lamps. The milky way was bright,
like a moonlit cloud; half heaven seemed milky way. The greater
luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter's moon. Their light
was dyed in every sort of colour--red, like fire; blue, like steel;
green, like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply did each stand forth
in its own lustre that there was no appearance of that flat,
star-spangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all the hollow of
heaven was one chaos of contesting luminaries--a hurly-burly of
stars. Against this the hill and rugged tree-tops stood out redly
dark."

Each passage has a fresh beauty that removes it from the perfunctory
tributes of the ordinary writer. B