320 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS. 
day veils — or else a pot of oclire streaked with indigo, is 
turned over on the canvas to " represent" for you an Italian 
sky and sunset ! 
Nature is not always volcanic — neither does she day by 
day go into convulsions of the picturesque, as do her "Great 
Masters !" I suppose they must be recognized as such, of 
course, since they are responsible for the agonising monstros- 
ities of their too literal disciples. Nature is altogether too 
serene in her habitual moods for these Fire Worshippers of 
Art, whose softest shadows are of smoke and storm clouds. 
Such minds do not comprehend sublimity ^ — they cannot 
understand that as music is rolled up from the abyss, filling 
Silence with the gradual volume of its awful symphonies, so 
Art must rear its solemn forms upon the plane of vast Ee- 
pose ! 
How simple the accessaries of her grandest pictures ! 
Behold a tropical forest! Beneath its deep shadows a 
herd of elephants! They browse on the dark green and 
glossy leaves, or lean their sage heads in heavy quiet against 
the great stems around them ! 
What association ! 
The far Orient^ — ^the Magii — the ivory and gold of Ophir — 
the Barbarian Po, and the world conquering Macedonian, 
Darius, Xerxes, with their swarming millions, Xenophon, 
the subtle, with his hardy handful, Marathon, Thermopylae 
— the pageantry, the glory, the decay — all rise in quick com- 
ing shadows to the spell of that simple picture. 
The slimy Nile beneath a burning sun — a crocodile — an 
Ibis! 
And pyramids loom along the sky-rimmed desert — 
Sph^mx-guarded palaces, mightier than the very dreams of 
man's ambition since, and Hecatombs of mummied nations, 
come all unbidden with the scene. 
A few ostriches, a clump of palm trees ! 
Jacob's Well — Hagar in the wilderness — the fire-eyed 
barb, tireless and swift of foot — the tinkling bells of the long 
