THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



death, nor any other creature can separate 

 us from it. 



Yet even with its nearness and its per- 

 suasiveness, we disallow it. We forget it. 

 Or, if we catch a glimpse of it in the mirror 

 of temporary sanity, we go away and 

 straightway forget what manner of men we 

 are. We do not feel it, cherish it as we 

 ought, cultivate its intimate acquaintance, 

 nor love it consciously and reasonably. 



The American landscape is, first of all, 

 large. This sounds like a vulgar claim to 

 make for it; but Aristotle said that any 

 object to be beautiful must have a certain 

 magnitude. Microscopic views, strictly 

 speaking, cannot be beautiful. But height 

 and depth and space in a landscape mean 

 vastly more than in a statue, a painting, 

 or a piece of music. A mountain cannot be 

 a mountain until it is a thousand feet high, 

 and if a river is not large enough, it may 

 be mistaken for a brook. I like Champlain 

 better than Lake George, chiefly because 

 it is larger. The plains of Kansas and 

 Texas are magnificent for their illimitable, 

 unbroken stretch. The great passes of the 

 Rockies lift our souls out of our puny 

 bodies just by virtue of the sheer stupen- 



102 



