by Edgar Allan Poe
(1850)
The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut.
The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light.
The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew.
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.Giles Fletcher.
FROM his cradle to his grave a gale of
prosperity bore my friend Ellison along. Nor do I use the word
prosperity in its mere worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous
with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born for the
purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price,
Priestley, and Condorcet- of exemplifying by individual
instance what has been deemed the chimera of the
perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that
I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies
some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious
examination of his career has given me to understand that in
general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity
arises the wretchedness of mankind- that as a species we have
in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content- and
that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all
thought on the great question of the social condition, it is
not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual
and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.
With opinions such as these my young friend, too,
was fully imbued, and thus it is worthy of observation that the
uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was, in
great measure, the result of preconcert. It is indeed evident
that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and
then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison
would have found himself precipitated, by the very
extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of
unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments.
But it is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness.
The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He
admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly,
conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was
(strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free
exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, "attainable by
other means is scarcely worth the name." He instanced the
ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the
earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly
considered happier than others. His second condition was the
love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization,
was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of
unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal,
the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the
spirituality of this object.
Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion
of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace
and beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order
to which the acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an
intuition and a necessity. His family was one of the most
illustrious of the empire. His bride was the loveliest and most
devoted of women. His possessions had been always ample; but on
the attainment of his majority, it was discovered that one of
those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his
behalf which startle the whole social world amid which they
occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the moral
constitution of those who are their objects.
It appears that about a hundred years before Mr.
Ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a remote province,
one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a
princely fortune, and, having no immediate connections,
conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a
century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing
the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate
amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison,
who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. Many
attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest;
their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the
attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a
legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar
accumulations. This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison
from entering into possession, on his twenty-first birthday, as
the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of four
hundred and fifty millions of dollars.*
* An incident, similar in outline to the one here imagined, occurred, not very long ago, in England. The name of the fortunate heir was Thelluson. I first saw an account of this matter in the "Tour" of Prince Puckler Muskau, who makes the sum inherited ninety millions of pounds, and justly observes that "in the contemplation of so vast a sum, and of the services to which it might be applied, there is something even of the sublime." To suit the views of this article I have followed the Prince's statement, although a grossly exaggerated one. The germ, and in fact, the commencement of the present paper was published many years ago- previous to the issue of the first number of Sue's admirable "Juif Errant," which may possibly have been suggested to him by Muskau's account.
When it had become known that such was the
enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many
speculations as to the mode of its disposal. The magnitude and
the immediate availability of the sum bewildered all who
thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount
of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a
thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any
citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to
supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time- or
busying himself with political intrigue- or aiming at
ministerial power- or purchasing increase of nobility- or
collecting large museums of virtu- or playing the munificent
patron of letters, of science, of art- or endowing, and
bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. But
for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the
heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to
afford too limited a field. Recourse was had to figures, and
these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three
per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no
less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars;
which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand
per month; or thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six
per day; or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour;
or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the
usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men knew
not what to imagine. There were some who even conceived that
Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at least one-half of his
fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulence- enriching whole
troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. To
the nearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual
wealth which was his own before the inheritance.
I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he
had long made up his mind on a point which had occasioned so
much discussion to his friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at
the nature of his decision. In regard to individual charities
he had satisfied his conscience. In the possibility of any
improvement, properly so called, being effected by man himself
in the general condition of man, he had (I am sorry to confess
it) little faith. Upon the whole, whether happily or unhappily,
he was thrown back, in very great measure, upon self.
In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He
comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august aims,
the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The
fullest, if not the sole proper satisfaction of this sentiment
he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of
beauty. Some peculiarities, either in his early education, or
in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed
materialism all his ethical speculations; and it was this bias,
perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous at
least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic
exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely
physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither
musician nor poet- if we use this latter term in its every-day
acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglected to become
either, merely in pursuance of his idea that in contempt of
ambition is to be found one of the essential principles of
happiness on earth. Is it not indeed, possible that, while a
high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is
above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen
that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained
"mute and inglorious?" I believe that the world has never seen-
and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the
noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will
never see- that full extent of triumphant execution, in the
richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely
capable.
Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although
no man lived more profoundly enamored of music and poetry.
Under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is
not impossible that he would have become a painter. Sculpture,
although in its nature rigorously poetical was too limited in
its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time,
much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all the
provinces in which the common understanding of the poetic
sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating. But Ellison
maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if
not altogether the most extensive province, had been
unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the
landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend
that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper
Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was
the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless
combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into
combination being, by a vast superiority, the most glorious
which the earth could afford. In the multiform and multicolor
of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most direct and
energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the
direction or concentration of this effort- or, more properly,
in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth-
he perceived that he should be employing the best means-
laboring to the greatest advantage- in the fulfilment, not only
of his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for
which the Deity had implanted the poetic sentiment in man.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold
it on earth." In his explanation of this phraseology, Mr.
Ellison did much toward solving what has always seemed to me an
enigma:- I mean the fact (which none but the ignorant dispute)
that no such combination of scenery exists in nature as the
painter of genius may produce. No such paradises are to be
found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the
most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be
found a defect or an excess- many excesses and defects. While
the component parts may defy, individually, the highest skill
of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be
susceptible of improvement. In short, no position can be
attained on the wide surface of the natural earth, from which
an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of
offence in what is termed the "composition" of the landscape.
And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are
justly instructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details
we shrink from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the
colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily
of the valley? The criticism which says, of sculpture or
portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized
rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural
combinations of points of human liveliness do more than
approach the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is
the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth
here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has
led him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art.
Having, I say, felt its truth here; for the feeling is no
affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no more absolute
demonstrations than the sentiments of his art yields the
artist. He not only believes, but positively knows, that such
and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute
and alone constitute the true beauty. His reasons, however,
have not yet been matured into expression. It remains for a
more profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to
investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is confirmed in
his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let
a "composition" be defective; let an emendation be wrought in
its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted
to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be
admitted. And even far more than this:- in remedy of the
defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity
would have suggested the identical emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is
the physical nature susceptible of exaltation, and that,
therefore, her susceptibility of improvement at this one point,
was a mystery I had been unable to solve. My own thoughts on
the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive intention
of nature would have so arranged the earth's surface as to have
fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection in the
beautiful, the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this
primitive intention had been frustrated by the known geological
disturbances- disturbances of form and color- grouping, in the
correction or allaying of which lies the soul of art. The force
of this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which
it involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and
unadapted to any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that
they were prognostic of death. He thus explained:- Admit the
earthly immortality of man to have been the first intention. We
have then the primitive arrangement of the earth's surface
adapted to his blissful estate, as not existent but designed.
The disturbances were the preparations for his subsequently
conceived deathful condition.
"Now," said my friend, "what we regard as
exaltation of the landscape may be really such, as respects
only the moral or human point of view. Each alteration of the
natural scenery may possibly effect a blemish in the picture,
if we can suppose this picture viewed at large- in mass- from
some point distant from the earth's surface, although not
beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily understood
that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may at
the same time injure a general or more distantly observed
effect. There may be a class of beings, human once, but now
invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may
seem order- our unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the
earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own,
and for whose death- refined appreciation of the beautiful, may
have been set in array by God the wide landscape-gardens of the
hemispheres."
In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some
passages from a writer on landscape-gardening who has been
supposed to have well treated his theme:
"There are properly but two styles of
landscape-gardening, the natural and the artificial. One seeks
to recall the original beauty of the country, by adapting its
means to the surrounding scenery, cultivating trees in harmony
with the hills or plain of the neighboring land; detecting and
bringing into practice those nice relations of size,
proportion, and color which, hid from the common observer, are
revealed everywhere to the experienced student of nature. The
result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather in the
absence of all defects and incongruities- in the prevalence of
a healthy harmony and order- than in the creation of any
special wonders or miracles. The artificial style has as many
varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. It has a
certain general relation to the various styles of building.
There are the stately avenues and retirements of Versailles;
Italian terraces; and a various mixed old English style, which
bears some relation to the domestic Gothic or English
Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may be said against the
abuses of the artificial landscape- gardening, a mixture of
pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is
partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design,
and partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss- covered
balustrade, calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that
have passed there in other days. The slightest exhibition of
art is an evidence of care and human interest."
"From what I have already observed," said Ellison,
"you will understand that I reject the idea, here expressed, of
recalling the original beauty of the country. The original
beauty is never so great as that which may be introduced. Of
course, every thing depends on the selection of a spot with
capabilities. What is said about detecting and bringing into
practice nice relations of size, proportion, and color, is one
of those mere vaguenesses of speech which serve to veil
inaccuracy of thought. The phrase quoted may mean any thing, or
nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result of the
natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all
defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special
wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the
grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams
of the man of genius. The negative merit suggested appertains
to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate
Addison into apotheosis. In truth, while that virtue which
consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the
understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the
loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can be apprehended in
its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denial- to
the excellencies which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art
can but suggest. We may be instructed to build a "Cato," but we
are in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an "Inferno."
The thing done, however; the wonder accomplished; and the
capacity for apprehension becomes universal. The sophists of
the negative school who, through inability to create, have
scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest in applause.
What, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their
demure reason, never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment,
to extort admiration from their instinct of beauty.
"The author's observations on the artificial
style," continued Ellison, "are less objectionable. A mixture
of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This
is just; as also is the reference to the sense of human
interest. The principle expressed is incontrovertible- but
there may be something beyond it. There may be an object in
keeping with the principle- an object unattainable by the means
ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if attained,
would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing that
which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet,
having very unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining
the necessary idea of art or culture, or, as our author
expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs at once with
extent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of
spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing about
such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or
design, while relieving his work of the harshness or
technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of
wildernesses- in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature-
there is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is
apparent to reflection only; in no respect has it the obvious
force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this sense of the
Almighty design to be one step depressed- to be brought into
something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human
art- to form an intermedium between the two:- let us imagine,
for example, a landscape whose combined vastness and
definitiveness- whose united beauty, magnificence, and
strangeness, shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or
superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to
humanity- then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while
the art intervolved is made to assume the air of an
intermediate or secondary nature- a nature which is not God,
nor an emanation from God, but which still is nature in the
sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and
God."
It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the
embodiment of a vision such as this- in the free exercise in
the open air ensured by the personal superintendence of his
plans- in the unceasing object which these plans afforded- in
the high spirituality of the object- in the contempt of
ambition which it enabled him truly to feel- in the perennial
springs with which it gratified, without possibility of
satiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for
beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not
unwomanly, whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in
the purple atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to
find, and found, exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity,
with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever
glowed in the rapt day-dreams of De Stael.
I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct
conception of the marvels which my friend did actually
accomplish. I wish to describe, but am disheartened by the
difficulty of description, and hesitate between detail and
generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite the two
in their extremes.
Mr. Ellison's first step regarded, of course, the
choice of a locality, and scarcely had he commenced thinking on
this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands
arrested his attention. In fact, he had made up his mind for a
voyage to the South Seas, when a night's reflection induced him
to abandon the idea. "Were I misanthropic," he said, "such a
locale would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulation and
seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in
such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I
wish the composure but not the depression of solitude. There
must remain with me a certain control over the extent and
duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I
shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have
done. Let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city-
whose vicinity, also, will best enable me to execute my
plans."
In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison
travelled for several years, and I was permitted to accompany
him. A thousand spots with which I was enraptured he rejected
without hesitation, for reasons which satisfied me, in the end,
that he was right. We came at length to an elevated table-land
of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording a panoramic
prospect very little less in extent than that of Aetna, and, in
Ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the far-famed
view from that mountain in all the true elements of the
picturesque.
"I am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a
sigh of deep delight after gazing on this scene, entranced, for
nearly an hour, "I know that here, in my circumstances,
nine-tenths of the most fastidious of men would rest content.
This panorama is indeed glorious, and I should rejoice in it
but for the excess of its glory. The taste of all the
architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of
'prospect,' to put up buildings on hill-tops. The error is
obvious. Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that
of extent, startles, excites- and then fatigues, depresses. For
the occasional scene nothing can be better- for the constant
view nothing worse. And, in the constant view, the most
objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst
phase of extent, that of distance. It is at war with the
sentiment and with the sense of seclusion- the sentiment and
sense which we seek to humor in 'retiring to the country.' In
looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help feeling
abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distant prospects as
a pestilence."
It was not until toward the close of the fourth
year of our search that we found a locality with which Ellison
professed himself satisfied. It is, of course, needless to say
where was the locality. The late death of my friend, in causing
his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visiters,
has given to Arnheim a species of secret and subdued if not
solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although infinitely superior
in degree, to that which so long distinguished Fonthill.
The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river.
The visiter left the city in the early morning. During the
forenoon he passed between shores of a tranquil and domestic
beauty, on which grazed innumerable sheep, their white fleeces
spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. By degrees the
idea of cultivation subsided into that of merely pastoral care.
This slowly became merged in a sense of retirement- this again
in a consciousness of solitude. As the evening approached, the
channel grew more narrow, the banks more and more precipitous;
and these latter were clothed in rich, more profuse, and more
sombre foliage. The water increased in transparency. The stream
took a thousand turns, so that at no moment could its gleaming
surface be seen for a greater distance than a furlong. At every
instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an enchanted
circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage, a
roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor- the keel balancing
itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which,
by some accident having been turned upside down, floated in
constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of
sustaining it. The channel now became a gorge- although the
term is somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because
the language has no word which better represents the most
striking- not the most distinctive-feature of the scene. The
character of gorge was maintained only in the height and
parallelism of the shores; it was lost altogether in their
other traits. The walls of the ravine (through which the clear
water still tranquilly flowed) arose to an elevation of a
hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet, and
inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to
shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which
depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead,
gave the whole chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings
became more frequent and intricate, and seemed often as if
returning in upon themselves, so that the voyager had long lost
all idea of direction. He was, moreover, enwrapt in an
exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still
remained, but her character seemed to have undergone
modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling
uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead
branch- not a withered leaf- not a stray pebble- not a patch of
the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled
up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a
sharpness of outline that delighted while it bewildered the
eye.
Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some
hours, the gloom deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected
turn of the vessel brought it suddenly, as if dropped from
heaven, into a circular basin of very considerable extent when
compared with the width of the gorge. It was about two hundred
yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but one- that
immediately fronting the vessel as it entered- by hills equal
in general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a
thoroughly different character. Their sides sloped from the
water's edge at an angle of some forty-five degrees, and they
were clothed from base to summit- not a perceptible point
escaping- in a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms;
scarcely a green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous
and fluctuating color. This basin was of great depth, but so
transparent was the water that the bottom, which seemed to
consist of a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was
distinctly visible by glimpses- that is to say, whenever the
eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the inverted
heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On these latter
there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size. The
impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness,
warmth, color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy,
daintiness, voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of
culture that suggested dreams of a new race of fairies,
laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and fastidious; but as the
eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, from its sharp
junction with the water to its vague termination amid the folds
of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy
a panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden
onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky.
The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from
out the gloom of the ravine, is delighted but astounded by the
full orb of the declining sun, which he had supposed to be
already far below the horizon, but which now confronts him, and
forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless vista seen
through another chasm- like rift in the hills.
But here the voyager quits the vessel which has
borne him so far, and descends into a light canoe of ivory,
stained with arabesque devices in vivid scarlet, both within
and without. The poop and beak of this boat arise high above
the water, with sharp points, so that the general form is that
of an irregular crescent. It lies on the surface of the bay
with the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined floor reposes a
single feathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or
attendant is to be seen. The guest is bidden to be of good
cheer- that the fates will take care of him. The larger vessel
disappears, and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies
apparently motionless in the middle of the lake. While he
considers what course to pursue, however, he becomes aware of a
gentle movement in the fairy bark. It slowly swings itself
around until its prow points toward the sun. It advances with a
gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the slight
ripples it creates seem to break about the ivory side in
divinest melody-seem to offer the only possible explanation of
the soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin the
bewildered voyager looks around him in vain.
The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of
the vista is approached, so that its depths can be more
distinctly seen. To the right arise a chain of lofty hills
rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It is observed, however, that
the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips into the
water, still prevails. There is not one token of the usual
river debris. To the left the character of the scene is softer
and more obviously artificial. Here the bank slopes upward from
the stream in a very gentle ascent, forming a broad sward of
grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and of
a brilliancy of green which would bear comparison with the tint
of the purest emerald. This plateau varies in width from ten to
three hundred yards; reaching from the river-bank to a wall,
fifty feet high, which extends, in an infinity of curves, but
following the general direction of the river, until lost in the
distance to the westward. This wall is of one continuous rock,
and has been formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged
precipice of the stream's southern bank, but no trace of the
labor has been suffered to remain. The chiselled stone has the
hue of ages, and is profusely overhung and overspread with the
ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the clematis.
The uniformity of the top and bottom lines of the wall is fully
relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height, growing singly
or in small groups, both along the plateau and in the domain
behind the wall, but in close proximity to it; so that frequent
limbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip their
pendent extremities into the water. Farther back within the
domain, the vision is impeded by an impenetrable screen of
foliage.
These things are observed during the canoe's
gradual approach to what I have called the gate of the vista.
On drawing nearer to this, however, its chasm-like appearance
vanishes; a new outlet from the bay is discovered to the left-
in which direction the wall is also seen to sweep, still
following the general course of the stream. Down this new
opening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the stream,
accompanied by the wall, still bends to the left, until both
are swallowed up by the leaves.
The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the
winding channel; and here the shore opposite the wall is found
to resemble that opposite the wall in the straight vista. Lofty
hills, rising occasionally into mountains, and covered with
vegetation in wild luxuriance, still shut in the scene.
Floating gently onward, but with a velocity
slightly augmented, the voyager, after many short turns, finds
his progress apparently barred by a gigantic gate or rather
door of burnished gold, elaborately carved and fretted, and
reflecting the direct rays of the now fast-sinking sun with an
effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest in
flames. This gate is inserted in the lofty wall; which here
appears to cross the river at right angles. In a few moments,
however, it is seen that the main body of the water still
sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall
following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume,
diverging from the principal one, makes its way, with a slight
ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from sight. The
canoe falls into the lesser channel and approaches the gate.
Its ponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded. The boat
glides between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast
amphitheatre entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases
are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of
their circuit. Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts
upon the view. There is a gush of entrancing melody; there is
an oppressive sense of strange sweet odor,- there is a dream-
like intermingling to the eye of tall slender Eastern trees-
bosky shrubberies- flocks of golden and crimson birds-
lily-fringed lakes- meadows of violets, tulips, poppies,
hyacinths, and tuberoses- long intertangled lines of silver
streamlets- and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass
of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself
by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a
hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the
phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies,
of the Genii and of the Gnomes.