Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/162

160 Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the black shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland. * * * Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own—shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive.



The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat (Fig. 66) stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quiet, solitary church-yard (Fig. 67), with its inscribed head-stone, its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly risen crescent