and happiness are none the less real, none the less
eternal By clay and by night, waking or sleeping,
gorgeous pictures toward the west were spread out
before these pilgrims — by day, phantasmagoria, aerial
plays of fancy as manifested in these terraqueous
metamorphoses due to variations from ordinary refrac-
tions of luminous rays in their passage through atmos-
pheric strata of different densities, thus pluralizing
reflections, bringing objects nearer, transporting them
to a distance, lifting them up from below the horizon,
investing and deforming them — by night, pictures of
the past and the future, the unwelcome present for
the moment wrapped in oblivion; pictures of home, of
opulence, of merry-makings, and heart-giaddenings.
Here, high above the ocean, between the two great uplifted ranges, where hills and desert flats rise well nigh into the clouds, is the native land of the mirage, distinct in its unreality, magnificent, though built of air and sand. Now it is a lonely valley, bearing in its bosom a glassy lake, girdled with waving groves and parted by rushing streams ; and now the gilded spires of a mighty city pierce the dull, desiccated heavens, massive masonry pillars the firmament, while long drawn shadows cross and re-cross the marble domes and crenelled turrets of a thousand palaces em- balmed in pleasant gardens like a Babylon, or gleam- ing from settings of silver as where the lion of Saint Mark keeps guard over the bride of the Adriatic; at times, ao-ain, their own images would loom out dis- torted in figure or position, like the ghost of Brocken, through the gloomy sultry air palpable with sand. As when, blear-eyed from long contentions with the sand and sun, exhausted by toilsome travel and faint- ing with thirst. Fancy strips the earth of its pallid cov- erino; and fills the rent with the vaulted firmament, sets up images motionless in the air and sends aerial animals of divers sorts in hot chase one after another, inundates sandy plains by the beating of the upshoot- ing sun upon the surface, and places before them
