336 The Ai^des and the Amazon. 



longed for in his writings — " the artist, who, studying in 

 nature's great hot-house bounded by the tropics, should 

 add a new and more magnificent kingdom of nature to 

 art." Colonel Staunton, true and lovely in his own char- 

 acter, was ever seeking in nature for whatsoever things are 

 lovely, whatsoever things are pure, and now was about to 

 add whatsoever things are grand. He was a Christian 

 artist, in sympathy with such men as Raphael and Leonardo 

 de Yinci. "The habitual choice of sacred subjects (says 

 Ruskin) implies that the painter has a natural disposition 

 to dwell on the highest thoughts of which humanity is 

 capable." ]^o shallow or false person could have con- 

 ceived his Ascension. Only the highest qualities of the 

 intellect and heart — a soul already half ascended — could 

 have given such ethereal lightness to those " two men in 

 white apparel." Only the pure in heart see God. As we 

 revisit in imagination the spot where he sleeps so well, we 

 behold, in the calm sublimity of the mountains that sur- 

 round his grave, an image of the undisturbed repose of his 

 spirit on the Rock of Ages. 



