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By George MacDonald
The room was handsomely furnished, but such as I would quarrel withnone for calling common, for it certainly was uninteresting. Not athing in it had to do with genuine individual choice, but merelywith the fashion and custom of the class to which its occupiersbelonged. It was a dining-room, of good size, appointed with all thethings a dining-room "ought" to have, mostly new, and entirelyexpensive—mirrored sideboard in oak; heavy chairs, just the dozen,in fawn-coloured morocco seats and backs—the dining-room, in short,of a London-house inhabited by rich middle-class people. A big fireblazed in the low round-backed grate, whose flashes were reflectedin the steel fender and the ugly fire-irons that were never used. Asnowy cloth of linen, finer than ordinary, for there was pride inthe housekeeping, covered the large dining-table, and a company,evidently a family, was eating its breakfast. But how come thesepeople THERE?
For, supposing my reader one of the company, let him rise from thewell-appointed table—its silver, bright as the complex motions ofbutler's elbows can make it; its china, ornate though not elegant;its ham, huge, and neither too fat nor too lean; its game-pie, withnothing to be desired in composition, or in flavour natural orartificial;—let him rise from these and go to the left of the twowindows, for there are two opposite each other, the room having beenenlarged by being built out: if he be such a one as I would have fora reader, might I choose—a reader whose heart, not merely his eye,mirrors what he sees—one who not merely beholds the outward showsof things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them,whose garment and revelation they are;—if he be such, I say, hewill stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akinto that which made the morning stars sing together.
He finds himself gazing far over western seas, while yet the sun isin the east. They lie clear and cold, pale and cold, broken withislands scattering thinner to the horizon, which is jagged here andthere with yet another. The ocean looks a wild, yet peacefulmingling of lake and land. Some of the islands are green from shoreto shore, of low yet broken surface; others are mere rocks, with abold front to the sea, one or two of them strange both in form andcharacter. Over the pale blue sea hangs the pale blue sky, fleckedwith a few cold white clouds that look as if they disowned the earththey had got so high—though none the less her children, and doomedto descend again to her bosom. A keen little wind is out, crispingthe surface of the sea in patches—a pretty large crisping to beseen from that height, for the window looks over hill above hill tothe sea. Life, quiet yet eager, is all about; the solitude itself isalive, content to be a solitude because it