THE DIVINE ABYSS 



you emerge from the woods, you get a glimpse of a 

 blue or rose-purple gulf opening before you. The 

 solid ground ceases suddenly, and an aerial perspec- 

 tive, vast and alluring, takes its place; another hea- 

 ven, countersunk in the earth, transfixes you on the 

 brink. " Great God ! " I can fancy the first beholder 

 of it saying, *'what is this? Do I behold the trans- 

 figuration of the earth? Has the solid ground melted 

 into thin air? Is there a firmament below as well as 

 above? Has the earth veil at last been torn aside, 

 and the red heart of the globe been laid bare?" If 

 this first witness was not at once overcome by the 

 beauty of the earthly revelation before him, or terri- 

 fied by its strangeness and power, he must have stood 

 long, awed, spellbound, speechless with astonish- 

 ment, and thrilled with delight. He may have seen 

 vast and glorious prospects from mountain-tops, he 

 may have looked down upon the earth and seen it 

 unroll like a map before him; but he had never be- 

 fore looked into the earth as through a mighty win- 

 dow or open door, and beheld depths and gulfs of 

 space, with their atmospheric veils and illusions and 

 vast perspectives, such as he had seen from moun- 

 tain-summits, but with a wealth of color and a 

 suggestion of architectural and monumental re- 

 mains, and a strange, almost unearthly beauty, such 

 as no mountain- view could ever have afforded him. 

 Three features of the canon strike one at once : its 

 unparalleled magnitude, its architectural forms and 



49 



