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A capital exception, however, is the dining-room, which should always, if possible, abound in cross-lights; else one half the table will be oppressed by a glare of light, and the other visible only in silhouette.
Confused as the law is with cross-lights of tradition, and hard as we may find it to arrive at perfectly satisfactory general theory, it does distinguish in a pretty sensible way, according to the nature and degree of the different perils incident to a given situation. From the simple case of walking we may proceed to the more complex cases of dealings with tangible objects of property.
But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages; and in the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring before the tumult of new and revolutionary generations; these traits in combination communicate to the papers a grace and strength of originality which nothing in any literature approaches, whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley, and some others in the same vein of composition.
Comte Maxime de Trailles now found himself the object of all glances, direct and indirect, standing as he did before the fireplace and illumined by the cross-lights of two candelabra. The few words said about him compelled him, in a way, to bear himself proudly; and he did so, like a man of sense, without arrogance, and yet with the intention of showing himself to be above suspicion.
The beauty of ordinary things depends upon the angle at which you see them and the light which falls upon them; and the work of the great artist and the great writer is to show things at the right angle, and to shut off the confusing muddled cross-lights which conceal the quality of the thing seen.
Compassed with these veils of flesh and weakness, groping amidst the shadows of time, bewildered by the cross-lights that fall upon us from so many surrounding objects, we have not yet eyes able to behold the ineffable glory.
That arm must be very weary which for a lifetime has been stretched out towards the horizon. Then think of the cross-lights, the mingled colours, the uncalculated relations which enter into the composition of the dreamer's life, and say whether that life is not more of a chaos than a cosmos.
With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man to his chest and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze of cross-lights: it turned like one of those revolving doors which have lately been fixed to the entrances of most restaurants, it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with it and suddenly hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness.
This narrative has been faithfully followed, with the aid of such cross-lights as could be secured from many other quarters, in preparing the present history. The editor of the first official report racked his brains to discover the special causes of the revolt, and never trusted himself to allude to the general one.
A man dealing with Napoleon was bound to meet perplexities innumerable, to thread a winding and devious track, branching out often into false trails that led nowhere, and confused by cross-lights which glittered only to mislead. In such a case, as in the doubtful paths of common life, the only sure guide to a man's feet is principle; and Nelson's principle was the destruction of the French fleet.
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