rees; singing birds enchant
the ear; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft note; the crested
lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave and stately
stork inspires the mind with thought, and leads it on to meditation
and repose. Life here was once idyllic, charming; here were once no
rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was a world of ease, simplicity,
and beauty; now it is a scene of desolation and misery."

This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw. It
describes in elaborate detail what it terms a "terrestrial paradise," and
closes with the startling information that this paradise is "a scene of
desolation and misery."

I have given two fair, average specimens of the character of the
testimony offered by the majority of the writers who visit this region.
One says, "Of the beauty of the scene I can not say enough," and then
proceeds to cover up with a woof of glittering sentences a thing which,
when stripped for inspection, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of
water, some mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a
conscientious effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same
materials, with the addition of a "grave and stately stork," spoils it
all by blundering upon the ghastly truth at the last.

Nearly every book concerning Galilee and its lake describes the scenery
as beautiful. No--not always so straightforward as that. Sometimes the
impression intentionally conveyed is that it is beautiful, at the same
time that the author is careful not to say that it is, in plain Saxon.
But a careful analysis of these descriptions will show that the materials
of which they are formed are not individually beautiful and can not be
wrought into combinations that are beautiful. The veneration and the
affection which some of these men felt for the scenes they were speaking
of, heated their fancies and biased their judgment; but the pleasant
falsities they wrote were full of honest sincerity, at any rate. Others
wrote as they did, because they feared it would be unpopular to write
otherwise. Others were hypocrites and deliberately meant to deceive.
Any of them would say in a moment, if asked, that it was always right and
always best to tell the truth. They would say that, at any rate, if they
did not perceive the drift of the question.

But why should not the truth be spoken of this region? Is the truth
harmful? Has it ever needed to hide