e one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country
round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were
engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood
in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated
around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing
scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some were
Maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the silent
bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which
seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. Perhaps as many
as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the
district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures
themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each
fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be
viewed.

The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all
eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own
attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface
of the human circle--now increased by other stragglers, male and
female--with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around
with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the
barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the
segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even
the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough
had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's
barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had
been no obliteration, because there had been no tending.

It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper
story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches
below. The heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a
continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to
the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence.
Occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their
faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some
distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies
of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. Then the whole
black phenomenon beneath represented Limbo as viewed from the brink by
the sublime Florentine in his vis