Chapter 170

AND OTHER STORIES 157 with an effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest in flames. This gate is inserted in the lofty wall, which here appears to cross the river at right angles. In a few moments, however, it is seen that the main body of the water still sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume, diverging from the principal one, makes its way with a slight ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from sight. The canoe falls into the lesser channel and approaches the gate. Its ponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded. The boat glides between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheater entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of their circuit. Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gush of entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange, sweet odor ; there is a dream-like intermingling to the eye of tall, slender Eastern trees, bosky shrubberies, flocks of golden and crimson birds, lily-fringed lakes, meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses, long intertangled lines of silver streamlets, and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semiGothic, semi-Saracenic architecture, sustaining itself as if by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles, and seeming the phantom handiwork conjointly of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii, and of the Gnomes. LANDOR’S COTTAGE A PENDANT TO “THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM. ” Puring a pedestrian tour last summer through one or two of the river counties of New York, I found myself as the day declined somewhat embarrassed about the road I