"Psychology", by Arthur Machen

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purlieu: originally land bordering a forest; here "a poor or disreputable area of a city, town, or district; a slum".

Tragic Comedians: title of an 1880 George Meredith novel, mentioned by Machen in his work of criticism "Hieroglyphics".

lupanar: a brothel

The picture used is Abingdon Villas Mansions, Abingdon Villas, London W8 At Junction with Allen Street London W8 (Taken from Allen Street), taken by R Sones as part of the Geograph project collection, and used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).

To follow along: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Ornaments_in_Jade/Psychology