Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/21

 in my youth; when it appeared clothed in a vivid, quiet light, in which the barns and fences checquer and partition it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretch away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon. The clouds, finely distinct and picturesque,—the light blue sky contrasting with their feathery softness,—so ethereal that they seemed a fit drapery to hang over Persia; and the smith s shop resting in the Greek light was worthy to stand beside the Parthenon. Not only has that foreground of a picture its glass of transparent crystal spread over it, but the picture itself must be a glass to a remote background. We demand, chiefly of all, of pictures, that they be perspicuous in this sense, and the laws of perspective duly observed; that so, we may see through them to the reality or thing painted. It is not the oasis in the foreground of the desert, but the infinite level and roomy horizon, where the sky meets the sand, and into which leads the path of the pilgrim, that detains the eye and the imagination.

"Such a background do all our lives want, [xiii]