“The Heart of the Andes”/Part 9

By the skirts of this forest we come to the village. A city of citizens we should feel to be out of place here. Volcanoes may be suitable companions for the turbulent abodes of men, as men now are. A melodramatic little Vesuvius, threatening when it is not outraging, always discontented, and often an insurgent malecontent, grumbling and bellowing, “full of sound and fury,” a demoniac and revengeful being, — this is a fit emblem, of a modern capital. But the solemn peaks of snow must stand among the giant solitudes. And yet, that we may not be quite deserted of human sympathy, the Artist has placed here a quiet hamlet grouped about its humble sanctuary. This is memorial enough of humanity, — we need not stand here bewildered as if we were its first discoverers. We have no uneasy sense of loneliness and exile. Brother men have lived and loved in this paradise. We do not require a crowd of minor associations such as help to glorify tame scenes of every-day life. Petty histories and romances are wanted to kindle fervors for petty places. Sentimental art demands ruins, and strives to “make old baseness picturesque.” But the magnificence of Nature here can be felt without aid from the past. Historic drapery is not needed. Absolute beauty can be loved at first sight. To think our noblest thoughts, we go away from relics to solitude, to God, and to the future.

There is poetic propriety, therefore, in this undisturbing village sanctified by its shrine of faith. Men have not forgotten their conception of God at the Heart of the Andes, — the heart of the heart of the world, where its pulses beat hottest and strongest. And the Artist sets up his own symbol of faith in the church and the foreground cross, and recognizes here that religion whose civilization alone makes such a picture as his possible. A pleasant hamlet is this, with its reed-thatched huts, — here where life is so easy and goes a-Maying all its days.