In Nature’s Wilds
“Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness of form and softness of environment; in a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster around the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur; you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid broken, shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength.
“To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence can the Son of Time not pretend; still less if some Specter haunt him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, specter-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world’s Happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that suit thee better: ‘Whoso can look on death will start no shadows.’
“From such meditations is the Wanderer’s attention called outward; for now the valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony, water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there.
“An upland, irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent toward every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together; only the loftier summits look down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude.
“No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province.
“But sunward, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and center of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah’s Deluge first dried!
“Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine.
“And as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion.
“The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four; it was open; servants and postilions wore wedding-favors; that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near; Du Himmel! It was Herr Towgood and—Blumine!
“With slight unrecognizing salutation they passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring thickets, onward, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter’s words, I remained alone, behind them, with the Night!”