Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the

splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear

sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs

caught the light and glared with a white intensity.

Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses;

westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the

Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park, the Langham Hotel, the

dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant

mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the

sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far

away and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal

Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul's was

dark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a

huge gaping cavity on its western side.

And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and

churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous

hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to

build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that

had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled

back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast

dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of

emotion that was near akin to tears.

247

The War of the Worlds