Has it ever been your fortune, courteous reader, to rise in
the earliest dawning of a summer day, ere yet the radiant beams of the sun have
done more than touch with light the domes and spires of the great city? . . .
If this has been your lot, have you not observed that magic powers have
apparently been at work? The accustomed scene has lost its familiar appearance.
The houses which you have passed daily, it may be for years, as you have issued
forth on your business or on your pleasure, now seem as if you beheld them for
the first time. They have suffered a mysterious change, into something rich and
strange. Though they may have been designed with no extraordinary exertion of
the art of architecture . . . yet you have been ready to admit that they now
“stand in glory, shine like stars, apparelled in a light serene.” They have
become magical habitations, supernal dwellings, more desirable to the eye than
the fabled pleasure dome of the Eastern potentate, or the bejewelled hall built
by the Genie for Aladdin in the Arabian tale.
--Arthur
Machen “N”
