THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 349 



their wealth of form, the complexity of configuration, 

 which continually excite the feelings and the mind to 

 varying activity. But it is wholly different with the great 

 Plains of Plants, which make quite a peculiar impression 

 on human nature. 



With a kind of feeling of disappointed expectation rides 

 the traveller in the Prairies of the West, anything but 

 refreshing appears the monotonous surface uniformly ' 

 overgrown with high Grass, the line of the horizon 

 unbroken even by the smallest elevation. He rides and 

 rides, but ever boundless space expands before his eyes, in 

 the same uniformity, in the same calm simplicity. The 

 idea which he at first avoided, the Infinity lying beyond 

 little Humanity, will present itself to him, the feeling of 

 hopeless loneliness creeps gradually into his heart. One 

 day after another climbs the east, and sinks into the west. 

 Ever wider and wider extends the Endlessness around him 

 and grows beyond all his previous conceptions of magni- 

 tude. Self-consciousness shrinks into narrower bounds, 

 and ever more paralyzing and oppressive lies the feeling of 

 Nothingness upon his trembling soul, and before he has 

 reached the further border, Despair or an infinitely deep 

 and inward Piety has taken possession of his heart. 

 Whenever uniform magnitude makes an aesthetic im- 

 pression, it is that of sublimity, before which Man sinks 

 in adoration to the dust. One particular modification of 

 these Prairies, is very characteristically named by the settlers 

 " rolling prairie," a boundless sea of smooth, uniform 

 waves of earth, twenty to thirty feet high. I do not 

 venture to describe the other angry glowing visage of these 

 giant meadows, when, in summer, accident or design has 

 kindled the dry grass, and the fire rolls forth over the 



