“Like marrowy crapes of China silk,
Or wrinkled skin on scalded milk,”
as they lie, soft and almost beautiful, in the growing light.
Where its first beams are kindling, the summits cast their shadows illimitedly over the darkening plains away on the right, until they melt away into the night,—a night which is not utterly black, for even here a subdued radiance comes from the earth-shine of our own world in the sky.
Let us leave here the desolation about us, happy that we can come back at will to that world, our own familiar dwelling, where the meadows are still green and the birds still sing, and where, better yet, still dwells our own kind,—surely the world, of all we have found in our wanderings, which we should ourselves have chosen to be our home.
FIG. 76.—GASSENDI. NOV. 7, 1867.
VI.
METEORS.
What is truth? What is fact, and what is fancy, even with regard to solid visible things that we may see and handle?