Chapter 17 of 23

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 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.