as at an end. I could not
banish from my mind the consciousness that I was among a people who,
however kind and courteous, could destroy me at any moment without
scruple or compunction. The virtuous and peaceful life of the
people which, while new to me, had seemed so holy a contrast to the
contentions, the passions, the vices of the upper world, now began
to oppress me with a sense of dulness and monotony. Even the serene
tranquility of the lustrous air preyed on my spirits. I longed for a
change, even to winter, or storm, or darkness. I began to feel that,
whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards
a better, and higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals of
the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the very
happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire.

Now, in this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark how
it contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system nearly all the
objects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placed
before human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in
which war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible,--a state in
which the freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost degree,
without one of those animosities which make freedom in the upper world
depend on the perpetual strife of hostile parties. Here the corruption
which debases democracies was as unknown as the discontents which
undermine the thrones of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it
was a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied.
Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class,
hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such
bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,--a
distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether.
Mechanical inventions, constructed on the principles that baffled my
research to ascertain, worked by an agency infinitely more powerful and
infinitely more easy of management than aught we have yet extracted from
electricity or steam, with the aid of children whose strength was
never overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and pastime,
sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the general use that
not a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices that rot our cities here
had no footing. Amusements abounded, but they were all innocent. No
merry-makings conduced to int