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The Domain of Arnheim
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 preeminent 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 labour 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
startled 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 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
1 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 million 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 enamoured 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
multicolour of the flower and the trees, he recognized 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--labouring to the greatest advantage--in the fulfillment,
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 towards 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
colours 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 loveliness 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 sentiment 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 colour-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 alternation 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 atmo-
sphere. 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 neighbouring land; detecting and bringing into practice those
nice relations of size, proportion and colour 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, everything
depends on the selection of a spot with capabilities. What is
said about detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of
size, proportion, and colour, is one of those mere vaguenesses of
speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The phrase
quoted may mean anything, 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 excellences which refrain. Beyond these, the
critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build the
"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, not 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 gar 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 shall 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 humour in "retiring to the
country". In looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot
help feeling abroad in the world. The heartsick avoid distant
prospects as a pestilence."
It was not until 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 visitor, 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 richer, 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 ultra-
marine 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 towards 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 colour. 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, colour, 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 oarsman 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 sides
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 labour 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 slight
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 wreathe 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 odour;--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 as if 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.