by Poe · Cluster: Flowers · Spring · Garden
Abstract
A reflective tale-essay on landscape gardening as the highest art, in which a wealthy aesthete builds an earthly paradise; its matter is beauty, the sublime, and the artist’s creation of an ideal garden.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)48.2 Flesch ease13.1 FK grade16.6 Fog15% complex26.5 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: Locus Amoenus Motifs: Garden, Money and Gold Themes & Concepts: Beauty, Sublime, Artist and Society Forms & Genres: Essay, Nonfiction Settings: Garden (2)
Testo integrale / Full text
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. (*1)
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 Staël.
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 visitors, 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 visitor 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 visitor, 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 _débris_. 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.