 | Life in the open air |  |
“THE HEART OF THE ANDES.”
On knowledge, under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in whose hand
Is Nature like an open book.”
We of the northern hemisphere have a geographical
belief in the Andes as an unsteady family of
mountains in South America, — a continent where
earthquakes shake the peaks and revolutions the
people, where giant condors soar and swoop, where
volcanoes hurl up orbed masses of fiery smoke by
day and flare luridly by night, where silver may
hang in tubers at the roots of any bush, and where
statesmen protocol, and soldiers keep up a runaway
fight, for the honor and profit of administering
guano. Long ago, in the dim cycles, Incas
watched the snowy Andes for the daily coming of
their God, the Sun. Then the barbaric music of
those morning oblations died away, and, except for
Potosi, the Andes might have been quite forgotten.
First again we hear of them as a scientific convenience.
That mysterious entity, the Equator, hung,
like a more tenacious Atlantic cable, from peak to
peak. French savans climbed and measured it,
and found it droll to stand at noon on their own
shadows no bigger than dinner-plates. The world
science; but later, as the Himalayas went up, the
Andes went down. Chimborazo dwindled sadly in
public esteem when it was proved that Kunchinjinga
and Gaourichanka could rest their chins upon
its crown without tiptoeing. By and by came
Humboldt and lifted the Andes again. He proclaimed
anew their marvellous wealth of vegetation,
and how they carry on their shoulders the forests
and gardens of all climes. He told, also, of
their grandeur, and invited mankind to recognize
it. But their transcendent glory, as the triumph
of Nature working splendid harmony out of brilliant
contrast, remained only a doubt and a dream,
until Mr. Church became its interpreter to the
Northern world.
A great work of art is a delight and a lesson.
A great artist owes a mighty debt to mankind for
their labor and thought, since thought and toil began.
He must give token that he is no thankless
heritor of the sum of human knowledge, no selfish
or indolent possessor of man's purest ideals of
beauty. The world is very tender, but very exacting
with genius. True genius accepts its duty,
and will not rest short of the highest truth of its
age. A master artist works his way to the core of
Nature, because he demands not husks nor pith,
but kernel. The inmost spirit of beauty is not to
be discerned by dodging about and waiting until
the doors of her enchanted castle shall stand ajar.
The true knight must wind the horn of challenge,
portcullis with a petard, and pierce to the shrine,
deaf to the blandishments of the sirens. Then when
he has won his bride, the queen, he must lead her
beauty forth for the world's wonderment, to dazzle
and inspire.
Recipients of the boons of Art have their duty
co-ordinate with the artist's. Art gives a bounty
or a pittance, as we have the will or the capacity
to receive, — copper to the blind, silver to the
fond, red gold to the passionate, dense light of diamond
to the faithful lover. We gain from a noble
picture according to our serenity, our pureness,
our docility, our elevation of mind. Dolts, fools,
and triflers do not get much from Art, unless Art
may perchance seize the moment to illuminate them
through and through, and pierce their pachyderms
with thrills of indignant self-contempt and awakening
love. For divine Art has power to confound
conceit into humility, and shame the unwashed into
purifying their hearts. Clown Cymon saw Iphigenia,
and presently the clown was a gentleman.
Even if we have a neat love for the beautiful, and
call ourselves by the pretty, modest title of amateurs,
we have a large choice of degrees of benefit.
We may see the first picture of our cycle, and receive
a butterfly pleasure, a sniff of half-sensual
emotion; or we may transmute our butterfly into a
bird of paradise, may educate our slight pleasure
into a permanent joy, and sweetly discipline our
passion of the finer senses into a love and a worship.
no pains, or refined lovers of the beautiful with
moderate pains. Let no one be diffident. Eyes
are twice as numerous as men; and if we look we
must see, unless we are timid and blink. We must
outgrow childish fancies, — we must banish to the
garret our pre-Praxitelite clay-josses, and dismiss
our pre-Giottesque ligneous daubs to the flames.
We may safely let ourselves grow, and never fear
overgrowth. Why should not men become too
large for “creeds outworn”!
“The Heart of the Andes” demands far more
than a vague confidence that we can safely admire
without committing ourselves. It is not enough
to look awhile and like a little, and evade discrimination
with easy commonplaces. Here is a strange
picture evidently believing itself to be good; if
not so, it must be elaborately bad, and should be
massacred. If good and great, let it have the
crown of unfading bays; but the world cannot
toss its laurels lightly about to bristle on every
ambitious pate. If we want noble pictures and
progress to nobler, let us recognize them heartily
when they come. An artist feels the warmth of
intelligent sympathy, as a peach feels sunshine.
The applause of a mob has a noisy charm, like the
flapping of wings in an army of wild-pigeons, but
the tidal sympathy of a throng of brother men
stirs the life-blood. When a man of genius asks
if he speak the truth, and the world responds with
a magnificent “Ay!” thenceforth his impulses
is the cause and the consequence of excellence.
As a contribution toward the understanding of
Mr. Church's great work, I propose in the following
pages to analyze its subject and manner of
treatment. I shall eschew technicality of thought
and phrase. The subject is new, the scenes are
strange, the facts are amazing. People in the
United States are familiar with solemn pine woods
and jocund plains and valleys, and have studied the
bridal-cottage picturesque everywhere; but Cordilleras,
and the calm of uppermost peaks of snow, and
the wealth of tropic forests, they know not. Some
commentary, then, on this novel work, seems not
impertinent. I am obliged to execute my task in
the few last days while the picture ripens rapidly
under the final brilliant touches of its creator; and
the necessity of haste must be my excuse for any
roughness of style or opacity of condensation.
Before proceeding to the direct analysis, let us
notice the strength of our position as American
thinkers on Art. Generally with the boons of the
past we have to accept the burdens of the past.
But only a withered incubus, moribund with an
atrophy, squats upon our healthy growth in Art.
We may have much to learn, but we have little to
unlearn. Young artists, errant with Nature, are
not caught and cuffed by the despotism of effete
schools, nor sneered down into inanity by conservative
dilettantism. Superstition for the past is
but irreverence is soon scourged out of every sincere
life. We have a nearly clear field for Art, and
no rubbish to be burned. Europe has been wretchedly
impeded and futilized in Art by worshipping
men rather than God, finite works rather than infinite
Nature, and is now at pains to raze and reconstruct
its theories. Our business is simpler, and
this picture is a token of inevitable success, — a
proof and a promise, a lesson and a standard. The
American landscape-artist marches at Nature with
immense civilization to back him. The trophies of
old triumph are not disdained, but they are behind
him. He is not compelled to serve apprenticeship
in the world's garrets of trash for inspiration,
nor to kotou to any fetish, whether set up on
the Acropolis, or the Capitoline, in the Court of
the Louvre, or under the pepper-boxes in Trafalgar
Square.
No lover of Art should be bullied out of his
faith in his own instincts and independent culture
by impertinencies about old masters and antique
schools. Remember that Nature is the mistress of
all masters, and founder of all schools. Nature
makes Art possible straightway, everywhere, always.
Habits of mind are in every man's power which
will make him an infallible judge of artistic excellence
at once. Does some one ask how to form
those habits for comprehending landscape Art?
If we are pure lovers of the world of God; if we
and loved to name it Heaven; if we have been
thrilled with the solemnity of violet dawn, and are
rich with remembered pageantries of sunrise, and
have known the calm and the promise of twilight
glories over twilight glooms, and have chosen
clouds to be the companions of our brightest earthly
fancies; if we have studied the modesty, the
stateliness, and the delicate fiery quietness of the
world of flowers, and have been showered with
sunbeams and shadows in the tremulous woods;
if we have watched where surges come, with a
gleam on their crest, to be lavish of light and
music on glittering crags; if, with the simple manly
singer of old Greece, we deem “water best,” —
best for its majesty in Ocean, best in the brave
dashes and massy plunge of a waterfall, best in
every shady dingle where it drifts dimples full of
sweet sunlight, and best in twinkling dew-drops on
a lily tossed into showers of sparkles by a humming-bird;
if we have felt the large grandeur of
plains sweeping up to sudden lifts of mountain, and
if mountains have taught us their power and energy,
and the topmost snow-peaks their transcendent
holy calm; if we have loved and studied Nature
thus, and kept our hearts undebased by sense and
unbewildered by mammon, — then it is to us that
noblest Art appeals, and we are its scholars and its
tribunal. Then we have no mundane errors to recant,
and will not keep up a shabby scuffle with our
convictions, and chuckle punily over some pinchbeck
fault in a noble work; but, finding that a bold lover
has gone nearer to Nature than we, will choose
him for our guide, and follow straight in his track
to the penetralia of beauty.
There are two questions to be asked regarding
“The Heart of the Andes.” 1. Is it a subject fit
to be painted? 2. Is it well done? Genius should
not choose for its theme, The Model Frog-Pond,
and revel there in the clammy ooze. And if Genius
paints the Portals of Paradise, they must not be
rusty, repulsive, and baleful as the Infernal doors.
This picture is a new-comer of imposing port
When a supernatural guest enters, the first question
is, — “Ho, the Great Unknown! Art thou
Archangel, or Ogre, or overgrown Scarecrow?”
Which of these personages have we here?
“Why paint the Andes?” says anybody. “Are
not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better
than all the waters of Israel? Why go among the
condors and centipedes for beauty? Cannot Mr.
Church stay at home and paint Niagaras? Or the
White Mountains, — they are a mile high?”
Why paint the tropics? Every passionate soul
longs to be with Nature in her fervor underneath
the palms. Must we know the torrid zone only
through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and
pithy? or by bottled anacondas? or by the tarry-flavored
slang of forecastle-bred paroquets? Rosy
summer dwells fair and winning beyond our Northern
wastes, where winter has been and will be, and
Warmth is the cheer, and sunshine the charm of
Nature. Without warmth, we become Esquimaux
nibbling at a tallow dip. Without sunshine, color
fades away into Arctic pallors. All the blush and
bloom and winy ripeness of earthly beauty are the
gifts of sunshine. Upon the tropics those gifts are
poured out most lavishly.
For some years past, Mr. Church has been helping
us to a complete knowledge of the exciting
and yet indolent beauty of the tropics. He has
learned the passion of those Southern climes, while
he has not unlearned the energy of his own. He
has painted the dreamy haste of the Magdalena,
the cataract of Tequendama, temperate uplands
where spring abides forever, and scene after scene
of sunny noon and tender evening, with river and
plain watched by distant snow-peaks. He has
given us already other noble smaller pictures of
the Andes, prototypes of the present work.
Men of science have sighed over their bewilderment
in tropic zones, where every novelty of vegetation
is a phenomenon. Botanists sit there among
the ruins of their burst herbariums, and bewail the
lack of polysyllabic misnomers for beautiful strangers
in the world of flowers. But Art should sing
pæans, when it discovers the poetry of form and
color entangled among those labyrinths, and hasten
to be its interpreter to the world. Mr. Church
has attempted to fulfil this duty already, and has
painted rich forests by rivers near the sea, where
mangroves, — luxuriant copses where the crimson
orchis glows among inland palms, — pulpy-leaved
trees all abloom with purple flowers, — delicate
mimosas, — ceibas like mounds of verdure, — bowers
of morning-glories, so dense that hummingbirds
cannot enter, and glades where lianas hang
their cables and cords, bearing festoons of large
leaves and blossoms with tropic blood shining
through their veins. He has happily avoided any
feeling of the rank and poisonous. No one calls
for quinine after seeing his pictures, or has nightmares
filled with caymans and vampires.
So much for the tropical lowlands. “The Heart
of the Andes” takes us to the tropical highlands.
It claims to convey the sentiment of the grandest
scenery on the globe. Through a mighty rift of
the South American continent parallel with the
Pacific, the Andes have boiled up and crystallized.
Under the equator, this Titanic upheaval was
mightiest. According to some cosmical law, power
worked most vigorously where beauty could
afterward decorate most lovingly. Here narrow
upright belts of climate are substituted for the
breadths of zone after zone from torrid to frozen
regions. All the garden wealth of the tropics, all
the domestic charm of Northern plain and field and
grove, dashed with a richer splendor than their
own, are here combined and grouped at the base
and along the flanks of bulky ranges topped with
snow and fire. Polar scenes are here colonized
eternal summer. The eye may catch a beam from
the scarlet orchis, child of fiery climes, and glance
before that rosy light is lost to the solemn white
dome of Chimborazo. We can look at the North
Pole through the crest of a palm, and cool the fire
in our brain by the vision of a frostier than the
“frosty Caucasus.” Symbols of passion and of
peace face each other. We can see at once what
the world is worth. What Nature has deemed
man fit to receive, is here bestowed in one largess.
All earth's riches are compacted into one many-sided
crystal.
In “The Heart of the Andes,” Mr. Church has
condensed the condensation of Nature. It is not
an actual scene, but the subtle essence of many
scenes combined into a typical picture. A man of
genius, painter, poet, organizer in any domain of
thought, works with larger joy and impulse when
he obeys his creative imagination. Life is too
short for descriptive painting; we want dramatic
painting. We want to know from a master what
are the essentials, the compact, capital, memorable
facts which he has had eyes to see and heart to
understand in Nature. We should have asked of
Mr. Church, after the elaborate studies of his two
visits among the Andes, to give us what he has
given here, — the vital spirit of these new glorious
regions, so that their beauty could become a part
of our minds, and all our future conceptions be
larger and richer for this new possession.
The first question, then, as to the subject of this
picture, is answered. The theme is worthy to be
treated. Let us proceed, secondly, to the special
analysis.
The picture may be roughly divided into different
regions, as follows: —
The Sky.
The Snow Dome.
The Llano, or central plain.
The Cordillera.
The Clouds, their shadows and the atmosphere.
The Hamlet.
The Montaña, or central forest.
The Cataract and its Basin.
The Glade on the right foreground.
The Road and left foreground.
Each of these regions I will take up in order.
The Scene is an elevated valley in the Andes, six
thousand feet above the sea; the Time, an hour or
two before sunset.
The artist might have chosen an enthusiastic
moment of dawn, when peaks of snow over purple
shoulders of porphyry confront the coming day.
Or he might have exhibited a sunset pageant with
marshalling of fiery clouds. Handled with his
ability of color, such would have been electrifying
effects of power in passionate action. But this
picture is to teach the majesty of Power in Repose.
The day's labor is over. High noon is long past,
but “gray-hooded even” not yet come. There is
rich accumulation of sunshine, and withal an undertone
of past and possible sorrow which so
deepens every present joy. In a previous great
picture, “The Andes of Ecuador,” painted after
Mr. Church's first visit, he has depicted the glory
of sunset flooding a broad wild valley. There the
sun is master, and its atmosphere almost dazzles
us away from simple study of the mountain forms.
In “The Heart of the Andes” the great snow-peak
is master, and its solemn, peaceful light the illuminator
of the scene. Any land can see the sun occasionally,
but any land cannot see dome mountains
of snow. Therefore let the sun retire from this
picture, and stand, as we do, spectator; and let us
have that moment of day when light is strong and
quiet, and shadows deep but not despotic.
The blue sky is the first region of the picture for
our study. Unless a landscape conveys a feeling
of the infinite, it is not good for immortals. This
sky is no brazen canopy, no lustrous burnished
screen, no opaque turquoise surface. It is pure,
penetrable, lucent in every tremulous atom of its
substance, and as the eye pierces its depths, it feels
the same vital quiver thrilling through a boundless
calm. Without an atmosphere of joy, earthly triumphs
and splendid successes are naught. As fully
is pure sky a necessary condition of delight in
the glories of Nature. Could that divine presence
of the snow-peak dwell in regions less clear and
radiant than those we are viewing? Blue sky
melting into a warmer glow overhangs, surrounds,
golden crown and silvery-shadowed heights. No
blank wall thrusts us back as we seek an egress
from the picture, but blue sky clinging and closing
about our way leads us on, sphere after sphere into
the infinite.
A few motionless cirri lie like wreaths of foam
flung together by meeting ripples on this aerial
ocean. Pellucid creatures of air are they, dwelling
in mid ether from which they came and into which
they will presently be transfigured after moments of
brilliant incarnation. They seem emanations from
the mountain, a film of its own substance, light
snow-drifts whirled up into the blue. Their spiritual
flakes lift the peak and intensify the hue of the
sky. Their white upon the azure is as delicate as
the mingling of erect white blossoms and violet-blue
wreaths of flowers in the right-hand foreground,
which in fact recalls and is a memorial of
them. Of the other clouds I will speak as I come
to their proper aerial region in the picture.
Next let our thoughts come down from these
supernal regions, and pause “new-lighted on a
heaven-kissing hill.” A man becomes exalted to a
demigod, more nobly divine than any of the Olympians,
when he can soar to such a summit as this.
An isolated snow-peak is the sublimest of material
objects, and worthiest of daring Art, if Art but
dare. Here it has dared and done.
This mountain is a type, not a portrait. If the
and fancy he sees the ghost of La Condamine stepping
off an arc of the Equator on its shoulders,
and blowing his icy fingers as he parts the snow to
find the line. But Cayambe perhaps does its share
in carrying the girdle of the world. It has been
useful enough in a scientific way, and need not take
the artistic responsibility of resembling this pictured
peak. Besides, compared to this, Cayambe
is but a stunted hillock, being only some nineteen
thousand feet high. The snow line of the equatorial
Andes is at sixteen thousand feet, and Cayambe's
three thousand feet of snow would be but a
narrow belt on this mountain's breadth of golden
fields of winter. Chimborazo then! — clarum et
venerabile nomen — is it Chimborazo? Alas those
revolutionary South American republics! — they
have allowed El Chimborazo to be dethroned.
Once he was chieftain of the long line from Tierra
del Fuego to Arctic ice. Then fickle men revolted
and set up two temporary bullies, a doubtful duumvirate,
Sorato and Illimani. Finally, some uneasy
radical rummaged out Aconcagua from modest retirement
in the Chilian Andes, and pronounced his
ermine to be broadest, unless his brother Tupungato
should pretend to rival him. This mountain,
dominant at the “Heart of the Andes,” is not then
Cayambe or Chimborazo, or any other peak of the
equatorial group. It is each and all of them, and
more than any. It is the type of the great trachytic
domes of the Andes, which stand in such solemn
Cotopaxi, and the terrible ghastly ruin of a gulf of
burning craters like Sangay.
And now, let us dally no more with questions,
but look and wonder before the supreme object of
the picture, — this miracle of vastness, and peace,
and beauty, not merely white snow against blue
sky, but Light against Heaven. No poetry of
words can fitly paint its symmetry, its stateliness,
the power of its rising slowly and strongly, from
chasm and cloud, up with pearly shadows and coruscating
lights, up with golden sunshine upon its
crown, up into the empyrean. The poetry is before
our eyes. A look can read it. For this is
what great Art alone can do, and triumphs in
doing. It gives a vision of glory, and every one
who beholds it is a poet.
But we can study the architecture of this firm
fabric. Consider on what a base it stands, — what
buttresses it has. No threatening crag is this that
may be sapped. Here toppling ruin will never befall.
We are safe in our Paradise at the Heart of
the Andes.
Observe the method of its growth. First, across
and closing the purple glen to the left, rises a
rosy purple mountain, as it were an experiment
of form toward the grander edifice. A few spots
of snow rest among its tyro domes and pinnacles.
It is not, then, a petty structure. The snow tells
us that, if it stood where stands the shadowy
mountain of the middle background, it would rise
far above that cloud-compelling height.
Behind this disrobed model of the grander forms
above, rises another experimental mountain, climbing
up to the regions where snow gives roundness
and softness to anatomical lines of rock. It leans
upon the dome, and bears it up with stalwart
breadth of shoulder. Separated from its younger
brother by profound ravines, it grows up a mighty
concave mass, a slow, majestic upward surge, with
a sweep, and sway, and climb in every portion of
its substance and its surface, and yet so broken by
insurgent crests of cliff, paly purple over opalescent
shadows, and so varied by slopes of snow,
and wreath, and drift, and dimple, and bend, and
rounded angle everywhere, that there is no monotony
in its solemn curve towards the dome. Faint
shadows of clouds dim its lustre. It has not yet
attained to the uppermost cloudlessness. A delicate
drapery of blue mistiness over its swelling
reaches is rendered with masterly refinement.
Two essays have thus been made in mountain
building, and two degrees of elevation overcome.
Now the vigor of the first purple cliffs, and the
broad sweep of the snowy shoulder, are combined
in the Dome. Suddenly, across its chasm of isolation,
the Dome mounts upward, and marks its firm
outlines against the sky. Its convex lines of ascent
are bold as the lines of the first model, while
its calm, rounded summit repeats the deliberate
curves of the snow-clad terrace beneath. There is
no insubordination among the parts, nothing careless
or temporary in the work. Skill and plan have
This is a firm head upon firm shoulders,
whatever else may crumble in a century, and fall to
ruin in an æon. Cities of men may sink through
the clefts of an earthquake, but this mountain is
set up to be a symbol of power for the world's life.
Observe further the effect of orderly vastness
given by the nearly parallel lines of the ridges upholding
the Dome. The uppermost of these is a
complete system of mutually sustaining buttresses.
Up from crag to crag of this ridge, the eye climbs
easily; dashing up the shady purple precipices,
resting in each gray shadow, speeding across the
snowy levels, leaping crevice, and pausing at each
fair dimple until it has measured its way up to the
specular summit. If colossal peaks rose, naked
rock, against the sky, their gloom would be overpowering.
And if fiends had the making of worlds,
mountains would be dreadful bulks of black porphyry,
the flame-born rock, — monuments and portents
of malignity. Cyclops and gnomes, to say
nothing of more demoniac craftsmen, would never
have capped their domes and pyramids with lightsome
snow. But mountains, the most signal of
earthly facts, are transfigured from gloom to glory
by the gentlest creature of all that float and fall, —
the snow-flake. It is not enough that air should
lie in clouds, and float in mists, and linger in violet
haze in every dell of the lower mountains, but there
must be a grander beauty than bare mountains, rich
with play of strong color, and softened with shadow,
earth God has set the beauty of his earth, — glory
of snow above the might of adamant.
When the observer estimates that the Dome is at
least sixty miles from his point of view, he will be
able to measure the power of its mass and the proportions
of its details. Each sunny dimple thus
expands to an abyss. Seeming ripples on the
snow-fields become enormous mounds heaped up
by the whirlwinds that riot forever among those
dry, unfathomable drifts, the accumulation of ages.
Below the first sheer slope on the front of the summit
is a chasm between the precipice and a bare
elbow of rock, — a lovely spot of pearly shadow.
Measure that chasm with the eye; — into it you
might toss Ossa and see it flounder through the
snow and drown; and Pelion upon Ossa would only
protrude a patch of its dishevelled poll. Things
are done in the large among the Andes.
Clouds close the view on each slope of the
Dome; on the left touched with orange, where
they reflect the glow of the peak; on the right
gray and shadowy. They half disclose and half
conceal a mysterious infinite on either side. An
isolated silvery aiguille juts out of this obscure, a
contrast in its color and keen form to the Dome,
and hinting at successions of unseen peaks beyond.
A slender stratus cloud comes in with subtle effect
across the vapors below the summit, — a quiet level
for the eye, where all the lines are curved and tending
upward.
The Dome is the Alpha and the Omega of the
picture, — first to take the eye as the principal
light, and the last object of recurring thought when
study proves that all the wealth below lies tribute
at its feet, and every minor light only recalls its
mild benignancy.
It is hard to put the essence of a volume into a
few paragraphs. This mountain is a marvel, and
merits silent study of hours; I have endeavored to
point out briefly its great qualities of construction.
The reader must remember that the beauty of
snowy mountains is a recent discovery. An age
ago, poets had nothing to say of them but a shiver,
and painters skulked away and painted “bits.”
The sublimity of snow-peaks should underlie all
our feeling for the lesser charms of Nature. Yet
many people of considerable sentiment still shiver
and skulk before these great white thrones of the
Almighty. But yet not every one who would, can
be a pilgrim to Mecca. Not every one can kneel
at the holiest shrines of Nature. Let us be thankful
to Mr. Church that he has brought the snowy
Andes to us, and dared to demand our worship for
their sublimity.
When our mortal nature is dazzled and wearied
with too long gazing on the golden mount, where
silence dwells and glory lingers longer than the
day, we may descend to the Arcadian levels of the
Llano at the “Heart of the Andes.” See how the
plain slides, smooth as water, carrying sunshine
of the central mountain. On the reaches of this
savanna is space and flowery pasturage for flocks
and herds. Llamas may feed there undisturbed
by anacondas. No serpent hugs; no scorpion
nips; never a mosquito hums over this fair realm.
Perpetual spring reigns. If the Arcadians wish
perpetual summer, with its pests and its pleasures,
they have only to mount a mule and descend; the
torrid zone is but a mile below. Life here may be
a sweet idyl; and the great mountains at hand will
never let its idyllic quiet degenerate into pastoral
insipidity.
A sweep of this fair meadow-land, eddying
along under steep banks behind the village, bears
us unawares up steep acclivities, and we become
mountaineers again, climbing the Cordillera.
The Dome was an emblem of permanent and infinite
peace: — this central mass of struggling
mountain, with a war of light and shade over all
its tumultuous surface, represents vigor and toil
and perplexity. The great shadow of the picture
is opposed in sentiment, as well as in color and
form, to the great light.
Begin with the craggy hillock at the centre of
the background, behind the village tower. It
seems a mere episode of the life of the great
mountain above it; but observe how thoroughly,
as in all Mr. Church's work, its story is told.
Detail is suggested, and yet suppressed. The
and maltreated with coarse neglect. You
may perceive or divine every line of sinking surface,
and every time-worn channel converging to
the gulf in its front. You may feel that it bears
up a multitudinous forest on its isolated crest,
where fires that sweep the mountain moors, or
“paramos,” have not reached. Level with this
compact pyramid extends to the left a bench of
rocky plateau, where we can gird ourselves for
our sturdy task. Then, as we toil resolutely up,
we find that earth was not at play when this Titanic
mass was reared. Here are mountain upon
mountain; crag climbing on the shoulders of
crag; plain and slope, and “huddling slant” and
precipice; furrow, chasm, plunging hollow, quebrada
and abyss; solitary knolls, groups of allied
hills, long sierras marked on their sheer flanks
with cleavage and rock-slides; conical mounds,
walls of stern frontage; myriad tokens of primeval
convulsions; proofs everywhere of change,
building, razing, upheaval, sinking, and deliberate
crumbling away, and how new ruin restores the
strong lines that old ruin weakened. Yet, with all
this complex action and episode, there is still one
steady movement upward of this bold earth-born
Hyperion higher toward the masterful heights,
with stronger step and larger leap as he learns
the power of sustained impulse, and mounts
nearer and nearer the region of final mysterious
battle in clouds and darkness, on the verge of
dwell upon the Dome. Here is a contrast of
mystery and dim chaos; — yet no grim obscure;
no shock of hurtling storms. The sun penetrates
the veil, and the heights glow pallid-rosy. Over
the edge, keen as a wave, of the topmost cliff,
float showery mists of tender iridescence; then
violet heights and rainbow-mists and wreaths of
pale cloud fade together out of sight.
Over all this central mountain play of color
rivals infinity of form. Evanescent blues, golden
browns, pearly violets, tender purples, and purple
greens mantle delicately over its giant shoulders.
If the Dome was a miracle of light, this mountain
is equally a miracle of light and shade. Gray
forests clothe a narrow zone at its base. Then
come the “paramos,” the rocky moors covered
with long yellow grass, where fires have frequent
course and drive the trees down into gorges far
beneath their proper level, — then the rocks, all
stained and scarred with time, and enriched with
lichens and mosses. Over all these many-colored
surfaces, air, pale or roseate, floats and deepens in
every hollow. Aerial liquidness, tremulous quivers
of light, rest on seamed front and smooth cheek.
Sunbeams rain gently down from the cloudy continent
above. We know not where it is not sun,
nor where the melting shadow fades. And all,
whether sunlit slope, or profound retreating abyss,
or sharp sierra, is seen through leagues of ether,
a pellucid but visible medium. Forms become undefined,
The enchantment of beautiful reality in all this
central mountain is heightened by the faint pencils
of light striking across the void. And observe, as
an instance of the delicate perception of truth that
signalizes every portion of this picture, that these
evanescent beams converge. Diverging rays are
familiar to every one who has seen sunsets. Old
Sol in the almanacs is a personage of jolly phiz,
with spokes of light diverging from cheek and
crown. But converging rays can only fall when
the sun is, as in this case, behind the point of view;
and this disposition of light is a phenomenon comparatively
rare. A regard for such fine truths as
this arms the artist with a panoply, and makes his
work impregnable.
No substitution of trickery for tactics could possibly
have drawn up this masterly array of mountain
elements. It is thorough knowledge and
faithful elaboration of detail that makes this central
mass real, and not mythic; a vast, varied
pyramid of rock, and not a serrated pancake of
blue mud set on edge. Mr. Church proves that he
knows and feels grand forms, and the colors which
pertain to them as inseparably as the hues of a
diamond belong to the facets of a diamond, and
that he is able enough, and diligent enough, to express
his knowledge and love. This harmonious
contrast of sun and shadow, crag and glen, educates
the eye forever to disdain those conventional
blotches of lazy generalization — vain pretenders
so many landscape backgrounds, and demand as
much of the student as if he should be required to
construct Hamlet from a ghost, the Tuileries from
a tile, or Paradise from a pippin.
A canopy of the lofty rain-clouds of this region
overhangs the central mountain. We have already
observed their shadows; let us now analyze their
substance, and note their effect.
Western winds sweeping the Pacific catch dew
from the thickets of palm-islands, and foam from
breakers on the reefs that shelter blue lagoons,
scoop handfuls from the deeps, where sunlight
strikes like bended lightning, and tear away the
stormy crests of surges. And as the winds hasten
on in their hot journey, they play with their treasures
of coolness, and find that vapor is a ductile
thing, and may be woven into transparent fabrics
of clouds, light, fragile, strong, elastic, and with
all the qualities of dw and foam, sunny water,
and the lurid might of angry sea. Such cloud-wreaths
the warm ocean winds hold ready to fling
upon every frigid slope of the Andes. No one of
these aerial elements is wanting to the clouds over
Mr. Church's majestic Cordillera. They have the
shimmer of dew, and the bulk of the surge; they
are light as a garland, yet solid to resist a gale.
Flexible sunbeams can penetrate this texture, and
twine themselves with every fibre, and yet bluff
winds cannot shatter them. Brightness and darkness
flow and fuse together among their rims and
contours.
These are not woolly clouds, nor fleecy breadths
of woolliness; not feathery clouds, nor brooding
feathered pinions. They are not curls of animal
hair, nor plumes of fowls. Only the morbid will
be reminded by them of flocks of sheep, or flights
of rocs. They are clouds made of vapor, not of
flocculent pulp, or rags, or shoddy. They are no
more like either syllabub or dumplings than Mr.
Church's air is like lymph, his water like yeast, or
his peaks like frosted plum-cake. Epithets from
the kitchen or the factory are equally out of place.
These are veritable clouds of coherent, translucent
vapor; — magical creations, because there is no
magic in them, but only profound, patient, able
handiwork guided by love. They are beautiful
because they are actual clouds of heaven, and
show that the artist knew the infinite life of clouds
and the dramatic energy of their coming and
going, eventful with shadow and light, and sometimes
with tears and dreary tragedies of storm, —
that he has seen what wreathed smiles they have
for sunshine, what mild rebuffs for boisterous winds,
— seen their coquetries of flying and waiting,
their coy advances, their wiles of hiding and peering
forth with bright looks from under hoods of
gray. And having thus studied the character and
laws, the use and the loveliness of these spirits
of the air, the artist, knowing that he cannot
better the models of Nature, has adopted them.
Painting of natural objects must be imitation or
mockery. A great artist studies to master type
can construct individuals as he will, but any attempt
to create new types results in inanity or
caricature, in the deformity of feebleness, or the
deformity of the grotesque.
Nothing in the picture is more masterly than
these clouds upon the Cordillera. See how they
climb and cling to the slopes, how they bridge the
hollows, and fling themselves against the opponent
cliffs, how they trail and linger, as if to choose
their bivouac for the night-watches. They do not
sag ponderous and lethargic, nor droop in sorry
dejection, weeping out their hearts because their
backs are broken. Nor do they fritter away
their dignity in a fantastic dance. They are elate
and springy with eagerness through all their brilliant
phalanxes, and detach themselves with perfect
individuality from the far-away sky and the dark
mountain. They are naturally and rightly in their
place, and give the needful horizontal, for change
of line, after so much height, as well as the needful
concealment and revelation of form.
But the Llano at the Heart of the Andes, the
village, the Montaña, the cataract, and the inexhaustible
charms of the rich foreground, invite us.
Let us take at a leap the gulf on the mountain-side
where a thread of cascade is faintly visible. We
advance over the gradual slope behind the dark forest,
and notice the forceful quiet of that breadth
of gray woodland in shadow, in the middle distance,
with its bold fronts of rock.
Let us here pause for a moment. What have we
done? Where are we? Let us review our mountain
work before we go among the groves and flowers
of Arcady. We passed first up the misty glen
to the left under the purple precipices, — a stern
gorge and a terrible, though now it look so fair.
We beheld the Dome, and approached it reverently.
We climbed its three terraces. We studied its
impressive mass. We saw where its foundations
were laid deep and broad, — the triumphant peace
of its golden curves against the sky, — and found
exquisite light in its shadows. We noticed the
magnificent rolling line of the Cordillera where it
cuts against the sky and meets the snows, —
observed its varied color and form, and marked what
a cloudy world it upholds on Atlantean shoulders.
We have, in short, studied the Andes, Cordillera and
Nevado, the region of animated clouds above the
one, and the realm of sinless sky above the other.
This is what we have done; — what we have
gained will appear when we come to review the
whole picture.
The woods behind the village are next to be
studied. Half-way down, a bench of warm rock
breaks the slope abruptly. The same formation of
precipice appears that reappears in the walls of
the cataract. Below this the woods radiate over
the descent toward the hamlet, and forward toward
the water. In all this multitudinous forest of the
Montaña, there is nothing of the gloom of the impenetrable
tropics. In this elevated valley vegetation assimilates
to that of the temperate zones; there is
never any nipping check of winter; the tree can
develop its life without harsh discipline of frost,
and grow without need of frantic impulse after long
lethargy. Hence we are at home, and yet strangers
in these woods. Our Northern comrades seem
to surround us, but they have suffered promotion.
They wear richer uniforms and more plentiful decorations.
Kindlier influences have been about.
Downright perpetual passionate sunshine has educated
their finer spirit, and made gross wrappings
of protective bark, and all their organization for
enduring cold, needless. It is a community which
has been well treated and not maltreated, wisely
nurtured and not harshly repressed.
The student will recognize the constituents of
these forests in the magnificent types of the foreground.
I desire at present merely to call his attention
to the healthy cheerfulness of their color,
and the vigorous, but not rank, character of their
growth. Down in the hot valleys, foliage sucks
dank from the sluggish air, and, growing fat and
pulpy, is not penetrated by sunlight, but only reflects
a hard sheen. Seen from above, lush greens
preponderate. Few of the largest trees have
leaves of delicate texture like our maples. But
the groves across the midlands of the Heart of the
Andes are gayer, as becomes their climate. And
giving to them a higher degree of what they have,
among them everywhere, in every glade and cleft,
making the whole scope one far glimmer of tremulous
scintillating leafage and burning blossoms. It
is, as we feel, a countless grove, with many masses
of thicket and careless tangles of drapery, such as
we see on the left-hand foreground, and vistas of
ambrosial gloom, such as open down the ferny dell
on the right.
By the skirts of this forest we come to the village.
A city of citizens we should feel to be out
of place here. Volcanoes may be suitable companions
for the turbulent abodes of men, as men now
are. A melodramatic little Vesuvius, threatening
when it is not outraging, always discontented, and
often an insurgent malecontent, grumbling and bellowing,
“full of sound and fury,” a demoniac and
revengeful being, — this is a fit emblem of a modern
capital. But the solemn peaks of snow must stand
among the giant solitudes. And yet, that we may
not be quite deserted of human sympathy, the Artist
has placed here a quiet hamlet grouped about its
humble sanctuary. This is memorial enough of
humanity, — we need not stand here bewildered as
if we were its first discoverers. We have no uneasy
sense of loneliness and exile. Brother men
have lived and loved in this paradise. We do not
require a crowd of minor associations such as help
to glorify tame scenes of every-day life. Petty
histories and romances are wanted to kindle fervors
and strives to “make old baseness picturesque.”
But the magnificence of Nature here can be felt
without aid from the past. Historic drapery is not
needed. Absolute beauty can be loved at first
sight. To think our noblest thoughts, we go away
from relics to solitude, to God, and to the future.
There is poetic propriety, therefore, in this undisturbing
village sanctified by its shrine of faith.
Men have not forgotten their conception of God
at the Heart of the Andes, — the heart of the
heart of the world, where its pulses beat hottest
and strongest. And the Artist sets up his own
symbol of faith in the church and the foreground
cross, and recognizes here that religion whose
civilization alone makes such a picture as his
possible. A pleasant hamlet is this, with its reed-thatched
huts, — here where life is so easy and
goes a-Maying all its days.
Divine repose was expressed by the Dome;
manly energy by the Cordillera. And now we
welcome a graceful feminine element. Water is
the fair stranger we are now to greet. We have
been all the while aware of her brilliant presence;
and have not rarely wandered away from the
rough hills to be refreshed by rainbow showers,
and stirred with a sense of dancing motion. Now
we may give ourselves fully to the river's bright
influence. Forth from a sunlit spot it comes, as
unexpected as if we had not seen its placid delay
It comes with snow memories in the foam
of its rock-shattered flow. It curves with deep,
clear fulness into an upper rocky basin. It gushes
so firm and urgent against its walls that its reflected
edges are seen to be heaped higher than
the unchecked slide of its mid-current. One inch
more in its angle of descent would send that
whole smooth clearness flying into foam. But its
strong speed does not spoil its mirror-like quietness.
It moves steadily on to its beautiful duty,
and then suddenly — “the wild cataract leaps in
glory.”
The river is transfigured before us. Motion
flings itself out into light. Green water snows
down in a glimmering belt of white. Every drop
dashes away from every other drop. Each one has
its own sunbeam. Diamond flashes join into jewelled
wreaths. Pearl and opal blend their soft
tremors. Sapphire and beryl mingle with the
strong glow of amber. And the wreaths intertwine
and float together, until the mid-whirl is a
gemmy turbulence, a crush of foam and spray, and
rays and rainbows.
There is no sharp line to mark where calm sliding
water is instantly transmuted into wild falling
water. The fall becomes a fall without any harsh
edge of precipice. We cannot define where the
shadowy gleam above bends fleeter over the first
ledges; nor where the bend first breaks with
spray, and spray thickens, and the curve passes
and all the bends, curves, leaps, and plunges fling
themselves together in joyful abandonment, thrilled
through and through with sensitive tremors of
graceful daring.
As the cataract comes gushing forward rather
than dropped in precipitous downfall, so it is not
received on a flattened level of water below.
Rocks break its plunge, and give it pause. And
then this shape of beauty, disarrayed, but fairer
thus, springs, not frantic or sullen, into a gloomy
chasm, but sweeps, a mist of sunshine, down
behind an iridescent veil, upon the white splendors
of its own image. It eddies with lambent
lights along the warm cliffs, and then glides down
the steps and rapids of a new career — on to join
the Amazon.
Serene sunshine fills the right of the gulf. On
the left, where spray keeps the mosses of the cliff
long and rich, is a flow of softened prismatic color,
and the angle is filled with opalescent reflected
lights from the sunny cataract. This is one of the
most enchanting effects in the picture.
The gleam of the Cataract recalls the snows of
the Dome. The bending plunge of the one repeats
the slow curves of the other. Across leagues of
full distance, the light of the fall, secluded and
subordinate, answers, like an echo, to the great
dominant light. And observe also in the division
of the cataract by its bold cliff, and in its parted
cascade falling in dimness on the right, a reminiscence
light at its summit. Such continuous effects sustain
the dramatic unity of the picture, and show
that one creative thought reigns everywhere.
Observe again how the level of the basin below
the cataract corresponds with the emphatic plateau
below the mountains, — repose after power. No
discomposure or weariness is anywhere possible.
We are nowhere beaten back and debilitated by
stern, rude heights we cannot climb. Slope and
plateau and successive grades of ascent take us
gently up from the lowest plane of blue water
speeding toward ocean, to blue, illimitable space
of sky. Step by step the eye is educated to
comprehend the vast scope of the scene, yet no
step is abrupt. There is always some spot where
the precipice breaks off into ledges, and where
steeps pass into declivities.
Before he comes to the complex beauty of the
foreground, let the student make one more excursion
over the large undulations and among the
shady coverts of the central forest, — the Montaña
of the Andes. Glows of approaching evening
lie among the long shadows and fall across
the glades. Not even where the dusky canopy
of clouds shuts off sunshine can this become an
austere woodland. Trees of many-colored foliage
make play of light even in the unillumined
spots; and sunshine, streaming low and level, betrays
a wilderness of leafage and umbrage, stems
and vines.
From these bright labyrinths we emerge again
into open daylight. Here, above the basin, warm
cliffs uphold a tablet where sunlight may blazon
its last fond inscriptions. Other hieroglyphs are
already there, — the story of the rock's own life
told in crevice, ledge, and mossy cleft, and the
myriad traces of Time, the destroyer and renewer.
As air above, so water below has pencilled its
legend. Lapping ripples have marked levels of
drought and freshet along its base. And the cliffs,
doing their part in this interchange of bland influences,
send down their image to hang without
heaviness in the shimmering water. The still
water reflects, as perfectly as the arrowy, shattered
water contained, light. How full of mild splendor
is this pool of Nepenthe! Into its amphitheatre
the river leaps exulting. A maze of woven sunbeams
floats above her bold repetition of feats done
in her youth among argent snows. She springs
out upon her own image, which falls before her,
a column of white lustre lengthening over the undulations,
only to break in the swift silvery bends
of the lower rapid. And above this wavering
image Iris floats within her veil of mist, and her
bright hues shine through it. The cataract sheds
prismatic tints upon the unsunlit cliffs, and the
cliffs that are in sunlight shed radiance upon the
air. The void is flooded with a glow of reflected
lights. All about, trees stoop over the brink and
tassel the precipices with tendrils and pendent
branches. Delicious spot, which he who will can
sees it brimming with effulgence. It lies open
before us, a lucent shell lined with imprisoned rainbows,
— a chalice of dissolved pearl, — a flushed
corolla, where the cataract rises like a white cone
of vestal leaves just opening, — a pool of newly
troubled water, where weary spirits may find healing
and lightness of heart.
We come now to the right-hand foreground.
Three specific typical trees project over the basin,
— a trio of comrades sustaining each other in their
vanguard station, — unmistakable individuals, evidently
not brothers. I have no names for these
pioneers. Probably no arborist, complacent with
offensive armor of Latin nomenclature, has penetrated
these solitudes at the Heart of the Andes.
But no ungainly polysyllable could identify these
trees more completely than do their distinctive
qualities as here given. Midmost stands the stalwart
masculine tree, oak-like in its muscular ramification,
and upholding a compact crown of plentiful
leafage. Light flashes everywhere in among
its leaves, catches them as they turn and gilds
them, slants across them sheenily, pierces athwart
their masses into the dim hollows and fills them
with gleams, stands at openings of cavernous recesses
in the dense umbrage and reveals their
mysterious obscurity. Twigs and sprays bare of
foliage, and showing that the crumbling away
of soil beneath is telling upon the more delicate
they clutch sunlight. And yet there is no frivolous
minuteness of detail in this masterly tree,
leader of the trio, and its fellows; although every
leaf and spray and twig seem to be there, alive and
animate. The Artist has here, as everywhere,
produced his effect by the peremptory facts of
form and color, without weakening precision by
attempts to convey ambiguous semblances. Hence
his tree is a round salient mass, but not a cactus-like
excrescence, and a maze of leafage without
being a blur or a mop. In signal contrast to this
sturdy, erect outstander is the tree with depending
branches and delicate silvery-green foliage, —
a tree of more elegance of figure and a mimosa-like
sensitiveness of leaves, but vigorous and not at
all shrinking from the forward and critical position
which it holds. The third tree, the Lepidus of
this triumvirate, keeps somewhat in the shady
background, and leans rather toward the thicket,
being of less notable guise and garb. His stiff,
scanty leafage and channelled bark are entirely
characteristic of the region. Each of these trees
is not only a type in its form and foliage, but also,
though less conspicuously, of the garden of smaller
growth which, feeding on air, dwells on its trunk.
Clustering luxuriance of boweriness belongs to
the sheltered recesses, and does not inundate these
foremost types. But each is a hanging garden,
an upright parterre raising up to sunshine its
peculiar little world of warm-blooded mosses,
like an alighting of butterflies. The tropical sun
loads his giants with his pigmies. Observe the
rich contrast of the mound of vivid moss with the
red trunk of the outermost tree. Each of these
trees wears a splendid epiderm, but neither has
had the leprosy, — an unpleasant malady which frequently
attacks foregrounds. Mr. Church's trees
are too freshly alive, and show that they digest
air and water too healthily to suffer with any cutaneous
disease. A somewhat formal personage
the leader of the pioneer trio may be, but his stiff
dignity is invaluable in this sybaritic covert, and
to the picture, as giving determined perpendicular
lines after so much level and slope. Behind this
picturesque group, two companions of theirs come
striding out of the dusky woodland, each a standard-bearer
of a new, unknown clan, and wearing
new insignia of rank.
Let us enter this delightsome pleasaunce whence
they come. Sunshine streams in with us a little
way, and leaves us for a spot it loves among the
choirs of blossoms. So we wander on into ambrosial
darkness. And over us the trailers stream
with innumerable tendrils; — our firmament is a
gentle tempest of gold and green, — a canopy of
showering clouds of verdure, — a rain of wreaths
and garlands. A cascade of bowery intricacy
shoots down inexhaustible, dashing into flowers at
its foot, and pouring a slide of sparkling greenery
among the ferns toward the pool. The cope of
the floral coppices, and lianas bind the bright
shower to the bright spray below. Just where
the bosk thickens, a tree fern stands like a plume,
waving us inward. Lesser ferns carpet the vista,
making a deeper, richer greensward than Northern
climates know; but this one is the pride of its
race. Its prim gracefulness gains the charm of
“sweet neglect” by the droop of its ripened and
withered fronds, and by the delicate creepers
which climb upon the scales of its past leafage.
No plant in the upland tropical woods is more elegant
than the tree fern. It surpasses even the
palm in refinement of foliage, and its plumes become
the substitute for palms in the elevated zones
where the latter would chill and wither. Behind
this fair, bending Oread, under o'erarching darkness,
extends the gloaming mystery of the
Montaña.
This vista of forest conducts us inward to a region
as doubtful and dim as the height of the
Cordillera above, and contrasts with the open road
on the left, guiding us up to the Dome. And
when we have had enough of dreamy wandering
deep in these bowers of Elysium, we may come
forth and pluck flowers in the wondrous garden
at the margin of the picture, — a maze of leaves
and blossoms as intricate as the maze of vinedrapery
above, or the maze of shower and rainbow
at the mountain-top. The Artist has come with
his hands full of tribute to Flora, and flung exuberant
warm dewy airs, stealing up the river, bring summer
higher than its wont. Liberal as is the beauty
here, there is no cramming, — no outlandish forcing
of all possible and many impossible objects into
an artificial clustering. Here there is simplicity
in complexity, — order in bewilderment. Nor is
this spot a glare of metallic lustres, and all aflame
with hot splendors, or incarnadined with crimson
hues. Peaceful colors govern here as everywhere
in this home of peace. The feathery blue cymes
of a plant which the Indians name “yatcièl”
recall the quiet blues of the sky. White spires
mingle with the blues. Below, the convolvulus
strews its rosy-purple disks over mantling vines.
A scarlet passion-flower, the “caruba,” sparkles
upon a garland of its own. Reedy grasses start
up erect. And lowest, broad juicy leaves, gilded
upon their edges with the all-pervading sunshine,
grow full and succulent with moisture from the
stream.
A perfect garden, — crowded with infinite delicacy
and refinement of leaf and flower, — where
there is no spot that is not blossom, or leafage, or
dim recess where faded petals may lie, — where all
seems so fair with these cloud-like creatures of
white, these wreaths of azure bloom, and stars of
scarlet, that this gentler beauty of earth almost
wins us to forget the grander beauty we have
known on the summits far away. And as we turn
away from the glade, with a boon of sweet flowers
with us are two brilliant white blossoms, dashed
with the same light which flashes in the cataract,
and burns sublimely in the far beacon, the giant
dome of snow.
The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in
unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, beloved
of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the
shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glories,
cast by the sprays and branches of a dead
bush. And notice how these shadows have light
in them, as shadows should, and are not dark like
the unillumined hollows beneath the rocks and
shrubbery. An admirably defined rock, part warm
color, part purple shadow, part hidden by the
caruba vines, leans against the bank, and aids in
supporting it.
In the middle of the lower foreground a large-leaved
tree, bristling with epiphytes, stands out
in vigorous perspective. The water below is half
seen through its branches, and gains by an effect
of partial concealment and a passing away out of
the picture behind a leafy screen.
The tawny slope of road in the left foreground
leads us back to another tangle of forest. All the
drooping, waving, tossing, prodigal luxuriance of
the glade on the right is here repeated in half-distance,
— another denser maze, wellnigh impenetrable,
in which we may discern the tree fern, now
familiar, and may feel that our previous studies
and “every bosky bourn of this wild wood from
side to side.” A vista, or cleft, across its intricacy,
rather suggested than patent, tells us where
the path leads towards the Llano and the Hamlet,
and the same vista opens to connect the nearest
glows and flashes of white light with the radiance
of the Dome. Forth from the forest the Road
dashes bright as another cataract, and yet a warm
surface of trampled earth. An infinite gemminess
of flowers scintillates along its course; — there
seems no spot where the eye may not catch a
sparkle. The same brilliancy gilds the rocks
which support the road on the right, and overhang
the abyss. Nothing in the picture is truer
or more marvellously salient in color and form
than the purple crag, with sunlight broken by
cross-shadows, lying upon its hither front. Nothing
is more boldly characterized, and more full of
fresh and vigorous feeling, than the sweep of the
road, accurately and precisely defined in all its
structure, and bathed in mellow sunlight and mellower
shade.
Just at the top of the ascent stands a cross, —
a token of gratitude for labor past, and rest
achieved. Such crosses are usual among the
passes of the Andes, wherever a height has been
overcome. The natives pause and repose, and say
a thankful Ave, as the two figures in the picture
seem to be doing. Their presence is a cheerful
incident, and their bright pouchos throw in a dash
against its dark background, has sweet symbolical
meaning, sanctifying the glories of the spot;
and, as in the old saintly legends flowers sprang
up under the feet of martyrs, so here a spontaneous
garland has grown to wreathe this emblem
of sacrifice and love.
Observe next how exquisitely the sloping side
of the road toward the dim precipice on the left
clothes itself with a mossy verdure, and how the
moss thickens and streams down into the chasm,
meeting the slender line of sapphire water that
trickles from a crevice in the steep. Foremost of
all the picture the Artist has set up his trophy in
the broken shaft, — the stem of some ancient monarch
of the forest. Upon this he has flung his
last brilliant spoils. The scarlet orchis stands out
like a plume from a tuft of other air-plants, a fall
of draping creepers hangs from above, strange rich
forms of plants cluster about its base, and, fastened
by a fillet of large leaves, each distinct upon its
own shadow, one burning white blossom gleams,
midway the column, like a jewel upon an argent
shield. Upon a branch just by, in bravery of
lustrous green plumage, sits the “royal bird of
the Incas,” and below gay butterflies twinkle.
Through some cleft of forest, beyond the verge of
the picture, one trenchant sunbeam strikes, and,
falling upon this propylon shaft, seems to set upon
the whole great work the sun's final signet of
approval.
I have thus treated rapidly, and perhaps baldly,
the signal facts of this picture. Its execution
everywhere equals its conception. It is indeed
many perfect pictures in one, — as a noble symphony
bears in its choral swell a thousand hymns
and harmonies. The lover of quiet beauty may
here find solace, and he who adores supernal beauty
has objects for loftiest worship. Yet so admirable
is the dramatic construction of the work, that no
scene is an episode, but each guides the mind on
to the triumphal crowning spectacle, — every
thought in the picture is an aspiration toward the
grand dominant thought, the Dome of snow.
“The Heart of the Andes” is in itself an education
in Art. No truer, worthier effort has ever
been made to guide the world to feel, to comprehend,
and to love the fairest and the sublimest
scenes of Nature. It opens to us, in these ardent
ages, a new earth more glorious than any we have
known. What Beauty can do to exalt mankind is
as yet only the dream of a few, but must some
time become the reality of all. Toward this result
Mr. Church offers here a masterpiece, the largess
of his bountiful genius. Men are better and nobler
when they are uplifted by such sublime visions,
and the human sympathies stirred by such revelations
of the divine cannot die; — they are immortal
echoes, and they
And grow forever and forever.”
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