At last, here comes a great and solemn sound; the commanding bells of the cathedral tower, in their iron, midnight toll. Through the sombre strokes, and striking into their long echoes, pierce the thin cries of bats, that wheel in air, like lost creatures who hate themselves; the uncanny flitter-mice! They trace superb, invisibles circles on the night; crying out faintly and plaintively, with no sort of delight in their voices: things of keen teeth, furry bodies, and skeleton wings covered scantily in leather. The big moths, too: they blunder against my face, and dash red trails of fire off my cigarette; so busily they spin about the darkness. _Sadducismus triumphatus!_ Yes, truly: here are little, white spirits awake and at some faery work; white, as heather upon the Cornish cliffs is white, and all innocent, rare things in heaven and earth. There is nothing dreadful, it seems, about this night, and this place; no glorious fury of evil spirits, doing foul and ugly things; only the quiet town asleep under a wild sky, and gentle creatures of the night moving about ancient places. And the wind rises, with a sound of the sea, murmuring over the earth and sighing away to the sea: the trembling sea, beyond the downs, which steals into the land by great creeks and glimmering channels; with swaying, taper masts along them, and lantern lights upon black barges. Certainly, this is no Lucretian night: not that tremendous _Nox, et noctis signa severa Noctivagæque faces cæli, flammæque volantes._ Rather, it reminds me of the Miltonic night, which is peopled alluringly with “faery elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress:” a Miltonic night, and a Shakespearean dawn; for the white morning has just peered along the horizon, white morning, with dusky flames behind it; and the spirits, the visions, vanish away, “following darkness, like a dream.”