post-script to messy WATT post, example of beauty, half-para

a gorgeous passage I partly quote, from pg 212:

"So Watt suspected that it was in the depths of the night, when the risk of disturbance was small, that Mr. Knott organized his exterior for the day to come. And what went far to strengthen this suspicion in the heart of Watt was this, that when sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, unable or unwilling to sleep he rose and went to the window, to look at the stars, which he had once known familiarly by name, when dying in London, and breathe the night air, and listen to the night sounds, of which he was still extremely curious, he sometimes saw, between him and the ground, lightening the darkness, greyening the leaves and, in wet weather, tinseling the rain, a fascia of white light."