THE WORKS

OF

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

(LORD LYTTON)


NIGHT AND MORNING

Book IV




CHAPTER I.

"O that sweet gleam of sunshine on the lake!"
WILSON'S _City of the Plague_

If, reader, you have ever looked through a solar microscope at the
monsters in a drop of water, perhaps you have wondered to yourself how
things so terrible have been hitherto unknown to you--you have felt a
loathing at the limpid element you hitherto deemed so pure--you have half
fancied that you would cease to be a water-drinker; yet, the next day you
have forgotten the grim life that started before you, with its countless
shapes, in that teeming globule; and, if so tempted by your thirst, you
have not shrunk from the lying crystal, although myriads of the horrible
Unseen are mangling, devouring, gorging each other in the liquid you so