Talk, I say again, of going to Europe, of visiting the ruins of feudal
castles, or Coliseum remains, or kings' palaces--when you can come
_here_. The alternations one gets, too; after the Illinois and Kansas
prairies of a thousand miles--smooth and easy areas of the corn and
wheat of ten million democratic farms in the future----here start up in
every conceivable presentation of shape, these non-utilitarian piles,
coping the skies, emanating a beauty, terror, power, more than Dante
or Angelo ever knew. Yes, I think the chyle of not only poetry and
painting, but oratory, and even the metaphysics and music fit for the
New World, before being finally assimilated, need first and feeding
visits here.
_Mountain streams._--The spiritual contrast and etheriality of the whole
region consist largely to me in its never-absent peculiar streams--the
snows of inaccessible upper areas melting and running down through the
gorges continually. Nothing like the water of pastoral plains, or creeks
with wooded banks and turf, or anything of the kind elsewhere. The
shapes that element takes in the shows of the globe cannot be fully
understood by an artist until he has studied these unique rivulets.
_Aerial effects._--But perhaps as I gaze around me the rarest sight
of all is in atmospheric hues. The prairies--as I cross'd them in my
journey hither--and these mountains and parks, seem to me to afford
new lights and shades. Everywhere the aerial gradations and sky-effects
inimitable; nowhere else such perspectives, such transparent lilacs
and grays. I can conceive of some superior landscape painter, some fine
colorist, after sketching awhile out here, discarding all his previous
work, delightful to stock exhibition amateurs, as muddy, raw and
artificial. Near one's eye ranges an infinite variety; high up, the bare
whitey-brown, above timber line; in certain spots afar patches of snow
any time of year; (no trees, no flowers, no birds, at those chilling
altitudes.) As I write I see the Snowy Range through the blue mist,
beautiful and far off, I plainly see the patches of snow.