Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/192

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182
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR.

THE CATHEDRAL OF PUEBLA.

easy, as the mountains near by keep the streams from becoming dry. The hills to the east go down to the Gulf. Orizaba's white dome flashes among them, the most perfect and most dazzling pyramid that nature has tossed up into the sky for the envy and the despair of ambitious mortals. What is Cheops's gray hill to this polished marble glory? How petty even Emerson's lines sound here:

"Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids."

What cares morning for that five hundred feet high of matched granite? As much as the proudest statesman for the infant's house of cards or blocks. It is a pretty specimen of childish ingenuity, and that is all. Nature in every line leaves art as matchless as God leaves man. She is its offspring, and what are our petty imitations to His creations? No. Morning sees Orizaba and Blanc and their co-creations not only long before, but with far