"Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs [he is writing of the newspaper accounts of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago]--sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land-breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal-fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel." There is no mistaking the _coda_ of this paragraph--selected at random--beginning at "and"; it suggests the author of Salammbo, and it also contains within its fluid walls evocations of sound, odour, bulk, tactile values, the colour of life, the wet of the waves, and the whisper of the wind. Or, as a contrast, recall the rank ugliness of the night when Razumov visits the hideous tenement, expecting to find there the driver who would carry to freedom the political assassin, Haldin. Scattered throughout the books are descriptive passages with few parallels in our language. Indeed, Conrad often abuses his gift, forgetting that his readers do not possess his tremendously developed faculty of attention. II