Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/107

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Earth as Others see it.
85

have beheld men struggling against their misery, and in vain; I have witnessed starvation, want, disease in a thousand loathsome forms of death. I have seen the wretched selfishness of men grasping for self only; the weak crushed by the strong, and the strong still insatiate. It is a world in which there are many terrible, and horrible, and despicable things, and a few noble or glorious. Yet, as to the world itself, it is, like all God's work, good of itself. Nature on earth is often very beautiful. In some things it rivals in loveliness our world. In the evenings often the silvery light of the satellite gives it a mysterious and soft beauty, such as we have not, and by day even many a scene is grand and brilliant. That green gem-like island south of the great continent[1] is very beautiful, and so in colder regions are many parts of the fair isles west of the great continent. The regions round the equator are full of splendid scenes. Even colder realms, in their frequent changes, have great variety—some silvery in whiteness, when the moist rain falls frozen to the earth in flakes; or in spring, green; or in summer, of many hues, growing more sober as winter comes. The

  1. Celyon