Chapter XXIV

But, after all, was their happiness perfect? No, the very sun, the "fount of Day," has spots on its surface--"wandering isles of night." If all had been wholly good and fair, this earth would have remained the Paradise it has never looked, "since Adam left his garden," as appears in the earlier editions; but now the line runs,

"Since our first sun arose and set."

Does "the haze of grief" then magnify the past, as things look larger in a fog?[21] Or does his present lowness of spirits set the past in relief, as projections are more apparent when you are beneath them? Or is the past from being far off always in glory, as distance lends enchantment to the view; and so the world becomes orbed

"into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?"

We are told that, if we were placed in the moon, we should see the Earth as--"the perfect star"--having a shining surface, and being thirteen times larger than the moon itself.