softly, Felicien David’s lovely level music of “The Desert,” as we bowled along.  There were long glittering side-streams between us and the black or green prairie,—­streams with little ripples on their faces, as the breeze kissed them in passing, and now and then a dimple, under the visit of a vagrant new-born beetle.  To call such shining waters mud or puddles did not accord with the spirit of the hour; so we fancied them the “mirroring waters” of the poet, and compared them to fertilizing Nile,—­whose powers, indeed, they share, to some extent.  By their sides ought to be planted willows and poplars, and alders of half a dozen kinds, but are not yet.  All in good time.  Thirsty trees would drink up superfluous moisture, and in return save fuel by keeping off sweeping winds, and money by diverting heavy snows, those Russian enemies to the Napoleon rail, and by preserving embankments, to which nothing but interlacing roots can give stability.  Rows of trees bordering her railroads would make Illinois look more like France, which in many respects she already resembles.

The haze or mirage of the prairies is wonderfully fantastic and deceptive.  The effect which seamen call looming is one of the commonest of its forms.  This brings real but distant objects into view, and dignifies them in size and color, till we can take a farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset clouds behind them for enchanted gardens hung with golden fruit.  But the most gorgeous effects are, as is usual with air-castles, created out of nothing,—­that is, nothing more substantial than air, mist, and sun- or moon- or star-beams.  Fine times the imagination has, riding on purple and crimson rays, and building Islands of the Blest among vapors that have just risen from the turbid waters of the Mississippi!  No Loudon or Downing is invoked for the contriving or beautifying of these villa-residences and this landscape-gardening.  Genius comes with inspiration, as inspiration does with genius; and we are our own architects and draughtsmen, rioting at liberty with Nature’s splendid palette at our command, and no thought of rule or stint.  Why should we not, in solider things, derive more aid, like the poor little “Marchioness” of Dickens, from this blessed power of imagination?  Those who do so are always laughed at as unpractical; but are they not most truly practical, if they find and use the secret of gilding over, and so making beautiful or tolerable, things in themselves mean or sad?

Once upon a time, then, the great State of Illinois was all under water;—­at least, so say the learned and statistical.  If you doubt it, go count the distinctly-marked ridges in the so-called bluffs, and see how many years or ages this modern deluge has been subsiding.  Where its remains once lay sweltering under the hot sun, and sucking miasms from his beams, now spread great green expanses, wholesome and fertile, making the best possible use of sunbeams, and offering, by their aid, every earthly thing that men and animals need for their bodily growth and sustenance, in almost fabulous abundance.