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

A Plea for Gas Lamps. 295
Drouot at the Figaro office, a new sort of urban
star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly,
obnoxious to the human eye ; a lamp for a
nightmare ! Such a light as this should shine
only on murders and public crime, or along the
corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten
horror. To look at it only once is to fall in love
with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance
fit to eat by. Mankind, you would have thought,
might have remained content with what Prome-
theus stole for them and not gone fishing the
profound heaven with kites to catch and domes-
ticate the wild-fire of the storm. Yet here we
have the levin brand at our doors, and it is pro-
posed that we should henceforward take our
walks abroad in the glare of permanent light-
ning. A man need not be very superstitious if
he scruple to follow his pleasures by the light of
the Terror that Flieth, nor very epicurean if he
prefer to see the face of beauty more becomingly
displayed. That ugly blinding glare may not