Mr. Ellison’s first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality, and scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention.  In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night’s reflection induced him to abandon the idea.  “Were I misanthropic,” he said, “such a locale would suit me.  The thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon.  I wish the composure but not the depression of solitude.  There must remain with me a certain control over the extent and duration of my repose.  There will be frequent hours in which I shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have done.  Let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city —­ whose vicinity, also, will best enable me to execute my plans.”

In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for several years, and I was permitted to accompany him.  A thousand spots with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right.  We came at length to an elevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of Aetna, and, in Ellison’s opinion as well as my own, surpassing the far-famed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the picturesque.

“I am aware,” said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight after gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, “I know that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of men would rest content.  This panorama is indeed glorious, and I should rejoice in it but for the excess of its glory.  The taste of all the architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of ‘prospect,’ to put up buildings on hill-tops.  The error is obvious.  Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent, startles, excites —­ and then fatigues, depresses.  For the occasional scene nothing can be better —­ for the constant view nothing worse.  And, in the constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst phase of extent, that of distance.  It is at war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusion —­ the sentiment and sense which we seek to humor in ’retiring to the country.’  In looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help feeling abroad in the world.  The heart-sick avoid distant prospects as a pestilence.”

It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search that we found a locality with which Ellison professed himself satisfied.  It is, of course, needless to say where was the locality.  The late death of my friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visiters, has given to Arnheim a species of secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long distinguished Fonthill.