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 Ellisonalong. Nor do I use the word prosperity in its mere worldly sense. Imean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemedborn for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price,Priestley, and Condorcet--of exemplifying by individual instancewhat has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the briefexistence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that inman's very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss.An anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that ingeneral, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises thewretchedness of mankind--that as a species we have in our possession theas yet unwrought elements of content--and that, even now, in the presentdarkness and madness of all thought on the great question of the socialcondition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certainunusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.
With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued, andthus it is worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment whichdistinguished 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. Ellisonwould have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successof his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for thoseof pre-eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object to pen anessay on happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a fewwords. He admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly,conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange tosay!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the openair. "The health," he said, "attainable by other means is scarcely worththe name." He instanced the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed tothe tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairlyconsidered happier than others. His second condition was the love ofwoman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contemptof ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he heldthat, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness wasin proportion to the spirituality of this object.
Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good giftslavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace and beauty he exceededall men. His intellect was of that order to which the acquisition ofknowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a necessity. Hisfamily was one of the most illustrious of the empire. His bride was theloveliest and most devoted of women. His possessions had been alwaysample; but on the attainment of his majority, it was discovered thatone of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his behalfwhich startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldomfail radically to alter the moral constitution of those who are theirobjects.
It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison's coming ofage, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison.This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediateconnections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulatefor a century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing thevarious modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to thenearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive atthe end of the hundred years. Many attempts had been made to set asidethis singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered themabortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and alegislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations.This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering intopossession, on his twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestorSeabright, 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 allwho thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount ofmoney might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things.With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would havebeen easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionableextravagances of his time--or busying himself with politicalintrigue--or aiming at ministerial power--or purchasing increaseof nobility--or collecting large museums of virtu--or playing themunificent patron of letters, of science, of art--or endowing, andbestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. But for theinconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the heir, these objectsand all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field.Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It wasseen that, even at three per cent., the annual income of the inheritanceamounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousanddollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousandper 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 twentydollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of suppositionwas thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were somewho even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at leastone-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulence--enrichingwhole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. To thenearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth whichwas his own before the inheritance.
I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up hismind 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 toindividual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In the possibilityof any improvement, properly so called, being effected by man himself inthe general condition of man, he had (I am sorry to confess it) littlefaith. 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 anddignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole propersatisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in thecreation of novel forms of beauty. Some peculiarities, either in hisearly education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged withwhat is termed materialism all his ethical speculations; and it was thisbias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous atleast, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, liesin the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus ithappened he became neither musician nor poet--if we use this latter termin its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglectedto become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that in contempt ofambition is to be found one of the essential principles of happiness onearth. Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of geniusis necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termedambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Miltonhave contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" I believe that theworld has never seen--and that, unless through some series of accidentsgoading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the worldwill never see--that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richerdomains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.
Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived moreprofoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances thanthose which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have becomea painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was toolimited in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time,much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all the provin
ces inwhich the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared itcapable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, thetruest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province,had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of thelandscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that thecreation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the mostmagnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field forthe display of imagination in the endless combining of forms ofnovel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vastsuperiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In themultiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised themost direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. Andin the direction or concentration of this effort--or, more properly,in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth--heperceived that he should be employing the best means--laboring to thegreatest advantage--in the fulfilment, not only of his own destiny aspoet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had implanted thepoetic sentiment in man.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." In hisexplanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solvingwhat has always seemed to me an enigma:--I mean the fact (which nonebut the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists innature as the painter of genius may produce. No such paradises are tobe found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the mostenchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be found a defector an excess--many excesses and defects. While the component parts maydefy, individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangementof these parts will always be susceptible of improvement. In short, noposition can be attained on the wide surface of the natural earth,from which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter ofoffence in what is termed the "composition" of the landscape. Andyet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justlyinstructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details we shrink fromcompetition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or toimprove the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism whichsays, of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted oridealized rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculpturalcombinations of points of human liveliness do more than approach theliving and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of thecritic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlongspirit of generalization which has led him to pronounce it truethroughout all the domains of art. Having, I say, felt its truth here;for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford nomore absolute demonstrations than the sentiments of his art yields theartist. He not only believes, but positively knows, that such andsuch apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and aloneconstitute the true beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet beenmatured into expression. It remains for a more profound analysisthan the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them.Nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice ofall his brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an emendationbe wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation besubmitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessitybe admitted. And even far more than this:--in remedy of the defectivecomposition, each insulated member of the fraternity would havesuggested the identical emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical naturesusceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility ofimprovement 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 primitiveintention of nature would have so arranged the earth's surface as tohave fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection in the beautiful,the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention hadbeen frustrated by the known geological disturbances--disturbances ofform and color--grouping, in the correction or allaying of which liesthe soul of art. The force of this idea was much weakened, however, bythe necessity which it involved of considering the disturbances abnormaland unadapted to any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested thatthey were prognostic of death. He thus explained:--Admit the earthlyimmortality of man to have been the first intention. We have then theprimitive arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissfulestate, as not existent but designed. The disturbances were thepreparations for his subsequently conceived deathful condition.
"Now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the landscapemay be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of view.Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a blemishin the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at large--inmass--from some point distant from the earth's surface, although notbeyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily understood that whatmight improve a closely scrutinized detail, may at the same time injurea general or more distantly observed effect. There may be a class ofbeings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar,our disorder may seem order--our unpicturesqueness picturesque, in aword, the earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own,and for whose death--refined appreciation of the beautiful, may havebeen set in array by God the wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres."
In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from awriter on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well treatedhis theme:
"There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the naturaland the artificial. One seeks to recall the original beauty of thecountry, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery, cultivatingtrees 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 revealedeverywhere to the experienced student of nature. The result of thenatural style of gardening, is seen rather in the absence of alldefects and incongruities--in the prevalence of a healthy harmony andorder--than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles. Theartificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastesto gratify. It has a certain general relation to the various styles ofbuilding. There are the stately avenues and retirements of Versailles;Italian terraces; and a various mixed old English style, whichbears some relation to the domestic Gothic or English Elizabethanarchitecture. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificiallandscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to ita great beauty. This is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show oforder and design, and partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss-coveredbalustrade, calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passedthere in other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an evidence ofcare and human interest."
"From what I have already observed," said Ellison, "you will understandthat I reject the idea, here expressed, of recalling the original beautyof the country. The original beauty is never so great as that which maybe introduced. Of course, every thing depends on the selection of aspot with capabilities. What is said about detecting and bringing intopractice nice relations of size, proportion, and color, is one of thosemere vaguenesses of speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought.The phrase quoted may mean any thing, or nothing, and guides in nodegree. That the true result of the natural style of gardening is seenrather in the absence of all defects and incongruities than in thecreation of any special wonders or miracles, is a proposition bettersuited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the ferviddreams of the man of genius. The negative merit suggested appertains tothat hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison intoapotheosis. In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mereavoidance of vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus becircumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, canbe apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits ofdenial--to the excellencies which refrain. Beyond these, the criticalart can but suggest. We may be instructed to build a "Cato," but weare in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an "Inferno." T
hething done, however; the wonder accomplished; and the capacity forapprehension becomes universal. The sophists of the negative school who,through inability to create, have scoffed at creation, are now foundthe loudest in applause. What, in its chrysalis condition of principle,affronted their demure reason, never fails, in its maturity ofaccomplishment, 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 toit a great beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to the senseof human interest. The principle expressed is incontrovertible--butthere may be something beyond it. There may be an object in keeping withthe principle--an object unattainable by the means ordinarily possessedby individuals, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to thelandscape-garden far surpassing that which a sense of merely humaninterest could bestow. A poet, having very unusual pecuniary resources,might, while retaining the necessary idea of art or culture, or, asour author expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs at once withextent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritualinterference. It will be seen that, in bringing about such result, hesecures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving hiswork of the harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In themost rugged of wildernesses--in the most savage of the scenes of purenature--there is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparentto 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 stepdepressed--to be brought into something like harmony or consistency withthe sense of human art--to form an intermedium between the two:--letus imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined vastness anddefinitiveness--whose united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness,shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or superintendence, on thepart of beings superior, yet akin to humanity--then the sentiment ofinterest is preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume theair 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 thehandiwork of the angels that hover between man and God."
It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a visionsuch as this--in the free exercise in the open air ensured by thepersonal superintendence of his plans--in the unceasing object whichthese plans afforded--in the high spirituality of the object--inthe contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feel--in theperennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility ofsatiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for beauty,above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly, whoseloveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple atmosphere ofParadise, that Ellison thought to find, and found, exemption fromthe ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount of positivehappiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of De Stael.
I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of themarvels which my friend did actually accomplish. I wish to describe, butam disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate betweendetail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite thetwo 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 luxuriantnature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. In fact, hehad made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night'sreflection induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I misanthropic," hesaid, "such a locale would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulationand seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in suchcase be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I wish thecomposure but not the depression of solitude. There must remain with mea certain control over the extent and duration of my repose. There willbe frequent hours in which I shall need, too, the sympathy of the poeticin what I have done. Let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populouscity--whose vicinity, also, will best enable me to execute my plans."
In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for severalyears, and I was permitted to accompany him. A thousand spots withwhich I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for reasons whichsatisfied me, in the end, that he was right. We came at length to anelevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording apanoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of Aetna, and,in Ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the far-famed viewfrom that mountain in all the true elements of the picturesque.
"I am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delightafter gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, "I know thathere, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of menwould rest content. This panorama is indeed glorious, and I shouldrejoice in it but for the excess of its glory. The taste of all thearchitects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of 'prospect,' toput up buildings on hill-tops. The error is obvious. Grandeur in any ofits moods, but especially in that of extent, startles, excites--and thenfatigues, depresses. For the occasional scene nothing can be better--forthe constant view nothing worse. And, in the constant view, the mostobjectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst phase ofextent, that of distance. It is at war with the sentiment and with thesense of seclusion--the sentiment and sense which we seek to humor in'retiring to the country.' In looking from the summit of a mountain wecannot help feeling abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distantprospects as a pestilence."
It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search thatwe found a locality with which Ellison professed himself satisfied. Itis, of course, needless to say where was the locality. The late death ofmy friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classesof visiters, has given to Arnheim a species of secret and subdued ifnot solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although infinitely superior indegree, to that which so long distinguished Fonthill.
The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visiter left thecity in the early morning. During the forenoon he passed between shoresof a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable sheep,their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. Bydegrees the idea of cultivation subsided into that of merely pastoralcare. This slowly became merged in a sense of retirement--this again ina consciousness of solitude. As the evening approached, the channel grewmore narrow, the banks more and more precipitous; and these latterwere clothed in rich, more profuse, and more sombre foliage. The waterincreased in transparency. The stream took a thousand turns, so that atno moment could its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distancethan a furlong. At every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within anenchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage,a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor--the keel balancing itselfwith admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which, by some accidenthaving been turned upside down, floated in constant company with thesubstantial one, for the purpose of sustaining it. The channel nowbecame a gorge--although the term is somewhat inapplicable, and I employit merely because the language has no word which better representsthe most striking--not the most distinctive--feature of the scene. Thecharacter of gorge was maintained only in the height and parallelism ofthe shores; it was lost altogether in their other traits. The walls ofthe ravine (through which the clear water still tranquilly flowed) aroseto an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fiftyfeet, and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, toshut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which dependeddensely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the wholechasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more frequent andintricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon themselves, sothat the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. He was, moreover,enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of naturestill remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification,there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard proprietyin these her works. Not a dead branch--not a withered leaf--not
a straypebble--not a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystalwater welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, witha sharpness of outline that delighted while it bewildered the eye.
Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloomdeepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vesselbrought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin ofvery considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. Itwas about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points butone--that immediately fronting the vessel as it entered--by hills equalin general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughlydifferent character. Their sides sloped from the water's edge at anangle of some forty-five degrees, and they were clothed from base tosummit--not a perceptible point escaping--in a drapery of the mostgorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a green leaf being visible among thesea of odorous and fluctuating color. This basin was of great depth, butso transparent was the water that the bottom, which seemed to consist ofa thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visibleby glimpses--that is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself notto see, far down in the inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of thehills. 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 suggesteddreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, andfastidious; but as the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, fromits sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid thefolds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancya panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes,rolling silently out of the sky.
The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of theravine, 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 nowconfronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitlessvista seen through another chasm-like rift in the hills.
But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, anddescends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices invivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this boatarise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the general formis that of an irregular crescent. It lies on the surface of the baywith the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined floor reposes a singlefeathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or attendant is to beseen. The guest is bidden to be of good cheer--that the fates will takecare of him. The larger vessel disappears, and he is left alone in thecanoe, which lies apparently motionless in the middle of the lake.While he considers what course to pursue, however, he becomes aware of agentle movement in the fairy bark. It slowly swings itself around untilits prow points toward the sun. It advances with a gentle but graduallyaccelerated velocity, while the slight ripples it creates seem to breakabout the ivory side in divinest melody-seem to offer the only possibleexplanation of the soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen originthe bewildered voyager looks around him in vain.
The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista isapproached, so that its depths can be more distinctly seen. To theright arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It isobserved, however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bankdips into the water, still prevails. There is not one token of the usualriver debris. To the left the character of the scene is softer and moreobviously artificial. Here the bank slopes upward from the stream ina very gentle ascent, forming a broad sward of grass of a textureresembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a brilliancy of green whichwould bear comparison with the tint of the purest emerald. This plateauvaries in width from ten to three hundred yards; reaching from theriver-bank to a wall, fifty feet high, which extends, in an infinity ofcurves, but following the general direction of the river, until lost inthe distance to the westward. This wall is of one continuous rock, andhas been formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice ofthe stream's southern bank, but no trace of the labor has been sufferedto remain. The chiselled stone has the hue of ages, and is profuselyoverhung and overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, theeglantine, and the clematis. The uniformity of the top and bottom linesof the wall is fully relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height,growing singly or in small groups, both along the plateau and in thedomain behind the wall, but in close proximity to it; so that frequentlimbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip their pendentextremities into the water. Farther back within the domain, the visionis impeded by an impenetrable screen of foliage.
These things are observed during the canoe's gradual approach to what Ihave called the gate of the vista. On drawing nearer to this, however,its chasm-like appearance vanishes; a new outlet from the bay isdiscovered to the left--in which direction the wall is also seen tosweep, still following the general course of the stream. Down this newopening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the stream, accompaniedby the wall, still bends to the left, until both are swallowed up by theleaves.
The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel; andhere the shore opposite the wall is found to resemble that oppositethe wall in the straight vista. Lofty hills, rising occasionally intomountains, and covered with vegetation in wild luxuriance, still shut inthe scene.
Floating gently onward, but with a velocity slightly augmented, thevoyager, after many short turns, finds his progress apparently barred bya gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold, elaborately carved andfretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now fast-sinking sunwith an effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest inflames. This gate is inserted in the lofty wall; which here appears tocross the river at right angles. In a few moments, however, it is seenthat the main body of the water still sweeps in a gentle and extensivecurve to the left, the wall following it as before, while a stream ofconsiderable 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. Itsponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded. The boat glidesbetween them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatreentirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by agleaming river throughout the full extent of their circuit. Meantimethe whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gushof entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweetodor,--there is a dream-like intermingling to the eye of tallslender Eastern trees--bosky shrubberies--flocks of golden and crimsonbirds--lily-fringed lakes--meadows of violets, tulips, poppies,hyacinths, and tuberoses--long intertangled lines of silverstreamlets--and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass ofsemi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle inmid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets,and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of theSylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the Gnomes.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 Page 17