of all vigorous life, there is another art--sometimes confounded
with it--founded on the freak of nature, in itself a mere sign of
atavism or disease. This latter art, which is occupied with the
antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from
ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite
plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are
variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all
his ugly crew in the arts, are freaks only.






The Oppression of the Hills





AMONG the cottages that are scattered through the hills of County
Wicklow I have met with many people who show in a singular way the
influence of a particular locality. These people live for the most
part beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in
the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. At
every season heavy rains fall for often a week at a time, till the
thatch drips with water stained to a dull chestnut, and the floor in
the cottages seems to be going back to the condition of the bogs
near it. Then the clouds break, and there is a night of terrific
storm from the south-west--all the larches that survive in these