Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be

  circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation,

  can be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the

  merits of denial -- to the excellencies which refrain. Beyond these,

  the critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build a

  "Cato," but we are in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an

  "Inferno." The thing done, however; the wonder accomplished; and the

  capacity for apprehension becomes universal. The sophists of the

  negative school who, through inability to create, have scoffed at

  creation, are now found the loudest in applause. What, in its

  chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason,

  never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration

  from their instinct of beauty.

  "The author's observations on the artificial style," continued

  Ellison, "are less objectionable. A mixture of pure art in a garden

  scene adds to it a great beauty. This is just; as also is the

  reference to the sense of human interest. The principle expressed is

  incontrovertible -- but there may be something beyond it. There may

  be an object in keeping with the principle -- an object unattainable

  by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if

  attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing

  that which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet,

  having very unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the

  necessary idea of art or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of

  interest, so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of

  beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will

  be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the

  advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of the

  harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of

  wildernesses -- in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature --

  there is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to

  reflection only; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling.

  Now let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to be one step

  depressed -- to be brought into something like harmony or consistency

  with the sense of human art -- to form an intermedium between the

  two: -- let us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined

  vastness and definitiveness -- whose united beauty, magnificence, and

  strangeness, shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or

  superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanity

  -- then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art

  intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary

  nature -- a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but

  which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels

  that hover between man and God."

  It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision

  such as this -- in the free exercise in the open air ensured by the

  personal superintendence of his plans -- in the unceasing object

  which these plans afforded -- in the high spirituality of the object

  -- in the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feel --

  in the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility

  of satiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for

  beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly,

  whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple

  atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found,

  exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater

  amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams

  of De Stael.

  I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the

  marvels which my friend did actually accomplish. I wish to describe,

  but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate

  between detail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to

  unite the two in their extremes.

  Mr. Ellison's first step regarded, of course, the choice of a

  locality, and scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when

  the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention.

  In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when

  a night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I

  misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. The

  thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of

  ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as

  yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of

  solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent

  and duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I

  shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have done. Let

  me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city -- whose vicinity,

  also, will best enable me to execute my plans."

  In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for

  several years, and I was permitted to accompany him. A thousand spots

  with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for

  reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right. We came at

  length to an elevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty,

  affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that

  of Aetna, and, in Ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the

  far-famed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the

  picturesque.

  "I am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight

  after gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, "I know

  that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of

  men would rest content. This panorama is indeed glorious, and I

  should rejoice in it but for the excess of its glory. The taste of

  all the architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of

  'prospect,' to put up buildings on hill-tops. The error is obvious.

  Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent,

  startles, excites -- and then fatigues, depresses. For the occasional

  scene nothing can be better -- for the constant view nothing worse.

  And, in the constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur

  is that of extent; the worst phase of extent, that of distance. It is

  at war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusion -- the

  sentiment and sense which we seek to humor in 'retiring to the

  country.' In looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help

  feeling abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distant prospects

  as a pestilence."

  It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search

  that we found a locality with which Ellison professed himself

  satisfied. It is, of course, needless to say where was the locality.

  The late death of my friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open

  to certain classes of visiters, has given to Arnheim a species of

  secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, alth
ough

  infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long distinguished

  Fonthill.

  The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visiter left the

  city in the early morning. During the forenoon he passed between

  shores of a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable

  sheep, their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling

  meadows. By degrees the idea of cultivation subsided into that of

  merely pastoral care. This slowly became merged in a sense of

  retirement -- this again in a consciousness of solitude. As the

  evening approached, the channel grew more narrow, the banks more and

  more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in rich, more

  profuse, and more sombre foliage. The water increased in

  transparency. The stream took a thousand turns, so that at no moment

  could its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distance than a

  furlong. At every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an

  enchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of

  foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor -- the keel

  balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark

  which, by some accident having been turned upside down, floated in

  constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of

  sustaining it. The channel now became a gorge -- although the term is

  somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because the language

  has no word which better represents the most striking -- not the most

  distinctive-feature of the scene. The character of gorge was

  maintained only in the height and parallelism of the shores; it was

  lost altogether in their other traits. The walls of the ravine

  (through which the clear water still tranquilly flowed) arose to an

  elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet,

  and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to

  shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which

  depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the

  whole chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more

  frequent and intricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon

  themselves, so that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction.

  He was, moreover, enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The

  thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have

  undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling

  uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead branch

  -- not a withered leaf -- not a stray pebble -- not a patch of the

  brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against

  the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of

  outline that delighted while it bewildered the eye.

  Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom

  deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel

  brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin

  of very considerable extent when compared with the width of the

  gorge. It was about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all

  points but one -- that immediately fronting the vessel as it entered

  -- by hills equal in general height to the walls of the chasm,

  although of a thoroughly different character. Their sides sloped from

  the water's edge at an angle of some forty-five degrees, and they

  were clothed from base to summit -- not a perceptible point escaping

  -- in a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a

  green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuating

  color. This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the

  water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of

  small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by glimpses --

  that is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far

  down in the inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On

  these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size. The

  impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth,

  color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness,

  voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that

  suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful,

  magnificent, and fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the

  myriad-tinted slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its

  vague termination amid the folds of overhanging cloud, it became,

  indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic cataract of rubies,

  sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky.

  The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of

  the ravine, is delighted but astounded by the full orb of the

  declining sun, which he had supposed to be already far below the

  horizon, but which now confronts him, and forms the sole termination

  of an otherwise limitless vista seen through another chasm -- like

  rift in the hills.

  But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and

  descends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices

  in vivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this

  boat arise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the

  general form is that of an irregular crescent. It lies on the surface

  of the bay with the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined floor

  reposes a single feathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or

  attendant is to be seen. The guest is bidden to be of good cheer --

  that the fates will take care of him. The larger vessel disappears,

  and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies apparently motionless

  in the middle of the lake. While he considers what course to pursue,

  however, he becomes aware of a gentle movement in the fairy bark. It

  slowly swings itself around until its prow points toward the sun. It

  advances with a gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the

  slight ripples it creates seem to break about the ivory side in

  divinest melody-seem to offer the only possible explanation of the

  soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin the bewildered

  voyager looks around him in vain.

  The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is

  approached, so that its depths can be more distinctly seen. To the

  right arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It

  is observed, however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the

  bank dips into the water, still prevails. There is not one token of

  the usual river debris. To the left the character of the scene is