little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous
forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose
result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied
degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape,
Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite to feed with
the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of
the field as his companions.

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that
was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely
puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was
to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to
accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode
of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself,
and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of
the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that
dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to
concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a
moment.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the
curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb
shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside,
there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it
feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from
her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan
mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we
had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut b