Chapter 162

150 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE of the scenes of pure nature — there is apparent the art of a creator ; yet this art is apparent to reflection only ; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to be one step depressed — to be brought into something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human art — to form an intermedium between the two: — let us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined vastness and definitiveness— whose united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanity— then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary nature — a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God.” It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision such as this, in the free exercise in the open air insured by the personal superintendence of his plans, in the unceasing object which these plans afforded, in the high spirituality of the object, in the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feel, in the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility of satiating, that one master passion of his soul — the thirst for beauty; above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly, whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found , exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of De Stael. I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the marvels which my friend did actually accomplish. I wish to describe, but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate between detail and