MODERN TRAVEL

permanently harmonious only with an existence
of better reputation as to its issues than the pres-
ent. 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. The
qualifications which frequently invest the facade
of a prison with far more dignity than is found in
the fa?ade 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 moun-
tain will be all of nature that is absolutely in
keeping with the moods of the more thinking
among mankind. And ultimately, to the com-
monest tourist, spots like Iceland may become
what the vineyards and myrtle-gardens of South
Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and
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