Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

A Plea for Gas Lamps. 293
another luminous hole into the dusk. The
Greeks would have made a noble myth of such
an one ; how he distributed starlight, and, as
soon as the need was over, re-collected it ; and
the little bull's-eye, which was his instrument,
and held enough fire to kindle a whole parish,
would have been fitly commemorated in the
legend. Now, like all heroic tasks, his labours
draw towards apotheosis, and in the light of
victory himself shall disappear. For another
advance has been effected. Our tame stars are
to come out in future, not one by one, but all in
a body and at once. A sedate electrician some-
where in a back office touches a spring — and
behold ! from one end to another of the city,
from east to west, from the Alexandra to the
Crystal Palace, there is light ! Fiat Liix, says
the sedate electrician. What a spectacle, on
some clear, dark nightfall, from the edge of
Hampstead Hill, when in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, the design of the monstrous