Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/179

156 the education and delight of this first visit were not to be measured by words.

There are three things which astonish an American beyond the power of expression on a first visit to Europe. One is a mountain, the second is a cathedral, the third is an old Italian villa, or a French chateau, or an English great house peopled by three hundred years of cultivated and continuous ownership.

"What a superb thing it is, that great house, with its terraces and fountains, its statues and groups of marble and bronze, its noble façade, its stately flights of steps, its gardens, à la Dufresnoy, at once grand and poetically wild; Nature claiming all in her charming caprices and fairy fantasies, Art standing back to look on and to admire! Shall we ever achieve that? No, not until we have had a past in which monarchs can squander millions. To cause a turf to become velvet we must first have a race of nobles and a dynasty of artists. Millionaires may paint their beautiful ceilings and hang the tapestries of Flemish looms on their walls, yet the most delicate intelligence, the most perfect taste, cannot give that last touch which Time so unconsciously adds; and without that touch how can we expect to build a cathedral like Milan, Cologne, Canterbury, York, Ely, Lincoln, or Seville, Toledo, Strasburg, Notre Dame, Chartres, Rouen?

And again, although since then our Western railroads have thrown open to us the fine snow-peaks of the Rockies, we can never have the surprise of the Swiss snow-mountains (which are next door to the palace and the cathedral); our scenery, majestic as it is, wants tradition and the marks of man's handiwork to give it perspective.

When we reached Paris, on our way home, it was November, and I had a cold, so that my first raptures were somewhat chilled.