clear water and glasses its white statues, its rich
capitals and fluted columns in the tranquil depths.
So, from marvel to marvel you have drifted on, thinking
all the time that the one last seen must be the chiefest.
And, verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until
the last, but you do not see it until you step ashore,
and passing through a wilderness of rare flowers,
collected from every corner of the earth, you stand
at the door of one more mimic temple. Right in
this place the artist taxed his genius to the utmost,
and fairly opened the gates of fairy land. You
look through an unpretending pane of glass, stained
yellow—the first thing you see is a mass
of quivering foliage, ten short steps before you,
in the midst of which is a ragged opening like a gateway-a
thing that is common enough in nature, and not apt
to excite suspicions of a deep human design—and
above the bottom of the gateway, project, in the most
careless way! a few broad tropic leaves and brilliant
flowers. All of a sudden, through this bright,
bold gateway, you catch a glimpse of the faintest,
softest, richest picture that ever graced the dream
of a dying Saint, since John saw the New Jerusalem
glimmering above the clouds of Heaven. A broad
sweep of sea, flecked with careening sails; a sharp,
jutting cape, and a lofty lighthouse on it; a sloping
lawn behind it; beyond, a portion of the old “city
of palaces,” with its parks and hills and stately
mansions; beyond these, a prodigious mountain, with
its strong outlines sharply cut against ocean and
sky; and over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud,
floating in a sea of gold. The ocean is gold,
the city is gold, the meadow, the mountain, the sky—every
thing is golden-rich, and mellow, and dreamy as a
vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon
canvas, its entrancing beauty, and yet, without the
yellow glass, and the carefully contrived accident
of a framework that cast it into enchanted distance
and shut out from it all unattractive features, it
was not a picture to fall into ecstasies over.
Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over
us all.
There is nothing for it now but to come back to old
Tabor, though the subject is tiresome enough, and
I can not stick to it for wandering off to scenes
that are pleasanter to remember. I think I will
skip, any how. There is nothing about Tabor (except
we concede that it was the scene of the Transfiguration,)
but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in all ages
of the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties
that flourished thirty centuries ago to the fresh
yesterday of Crusading times. It has its Greek
Convent, and the coffee there is good, but never a
splinter of the true cross or bone of a hallowed saint
to arrest the idle thoughts of worldlings and turn
them into graver channels. A Catholic church
is nothing to me that has no relics.