XX

The Giant

I sometimes fancy that every great city must have been built by night.
At least, it is only at night that every part of a great city is great.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps
architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
At least, I think many people of those nobler trades that work
by night (journalists, policemen, burglars, coffee-stall keepers,
and such mistaken enthusiasts as refuse to go home till morning)
must often have stood admiring some black bulk of building with a crown
of battlements or a crest of spires and then burst into tears at
daybreak to discover that it was only a haberdasher's shop with huge
gold letters across the face of it.

. . . . .

I had a sensation of this sort the other day as I happened to be
wandering in the Temple Gardens towards the end of twilight.
I sat down on a bench with my back to the river, happening to
choose such a place that a huge angle and facade of building
jutting out from the Strand sat above me like an incubus.
I dare say that if I took the same seat to-morrow by daylight I
should find the impression entirely false. In sunlight the thing
might seem almost distant; but in that half-darkness it seemed
as if the walls were almost falling upon me. Never before have I
had so strongly the sense which makes people pessimists in politics,
the sense of the hopeless height of the high places of the earth.