this is completely shut out from the houses, there is ordinarily no
darkness in your sense of the word.

At certain times, however, Montalluyah, both by day and night, is
overspread with thick darkness. Formerly, during this visitation, no man
could see his neighbour; fear seized the people. They believed it to be
the reign of bad spirits, and so it seemed; few dared venture from their
houses even to obtain food, and numbers died from terror and exhaustion.

Light is now made to displace darkness, and joyfulness to take the place
of mourning.

My scientific men discovered a means by which the causes that produced
the darkness are now used to remedy its inconveniences.

The City is made gloriously radiant. Forms of trees, birds, vases of
flowers and fruit, fountains, and other designs of many tints and great
beauty are transparent with light, rendered more beautiful by
combination with a peculiar electricity emitted by the earth--an
electricity which, be it observed, is the cause of the darkness.

The very birds by their warbling seem to greet the change, and the trees
and flowers emit a more delicious perfume.

There is music and rejoicing everywhere in the City. Many of the
electrical amusements provided appear grander from the contrast with the
darkness they are made to displace--a contrast scarcely greater than
that depicted by our "Nature Delineators" when, in allegory, they paint
the present contrasted with past times; the later years of my reign
contrasted with the beginning.