About the dreariest magazine or other reading we know of--and we get a
deal of it, too--is that which describes the visits of enthusiastic
persons to big caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly,
funereal--with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and
certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts,
who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a
boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself
with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and
"Halls," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal Wreaths" they see
there are not only finer than real ones (if you would believe them!) but
so grand and wonderful as to be really indescribable. So we find them,
by their turgid and stupid reports, which are all alike, and all dreary
and silly. We have never heard of anybody who got excited over these
pictures (except the artists themselves); and positively there is no
flatter reading anywhere than these gushing notes about big caves.
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