What made the valley look still wider was the two or three varieties
of weather that were visible on its surface, all at the same instant of
time. Here lay the quiet sunshine; there fell the great black patches
of ominous shadow from the clouds; and behind them, like a giant of
league-long strides, came hurrying the thunderstorm, which had already
swept midway across the plain. In the rear of the approaching tempest,
brightened forth again the sunny splendor, which its progress had
darkened with so terrible a frown.
All round this majestic landscape, the bald-peaked or forest-crowned
mountains descended boldly upon the plain. On many of their spurs and
midway declivities, and even on their summits, stood cities, some of
them famous of old; for these had been the seats and nurseries of early
art, where the flower of beauty sprang out of a rocky soil, and in
a high, keen atmosphere, when the richest and most sheltered gardens
failed to nourish it.
"Thank God for letting me again behold this scene!" Said the sculptor, a
devout man in his way, reverently taking off his hat. "I have viewed it
from many points, and never without as full a sensation of gratitude
as my heart seems capable of feeling. How it strengthens the poor human
spirit in its reliance on His providence, to ascend but this little way
above the common level, and so attain a somewhat wider glimpse of His
dealings with mankind! He doeth all things right! His will be done!"
"You discern something that is hidden from me," observed Donatello
gloomily, yet striving with unwonted grasp to catch the analogies
which so cheered his friend. "I see sunshine on one spot, and cloud in
another, and no reason for it in either ease. The sun on you; the cloud
on me! What comfort can I draw from this?"
"Nay; I cannot preach," said Kenyon, "with a page of heaven and a page
of earth spread wide open before us! Only begin to read it, and you
will find it interpreting itself without the aid of words. It is a great
mistake to try to put our best thoughts into human language. When we
ascend into the higher regions of emotion and spiritual enjoyment, they
are only expressible by such grand hieroglyphics as these around us."
They stood awhile, contemplating the scene; but, as inevitably happens
after a spiritual flight, it was not long before the sculptor felt his
wings flagging in the rarity of the upper atmosphere. He was glad to let
himself quietly downward out of the mid-sky, as it were, and alight on
the solid platform of the battlemented tower. He looked about him,
and beheld growing out of the stone pavement, which formed the roof, a
little shrub, with green and glossy leaves. It was the only green thing
there; and Heaven knows how its seeds had ever been planted, at that
airy height, or how it had found nourishment for its small life in the
chinks of the stones; for it had no earth, and nothing more like soil
than the crumbling mortar, which had been crammed into the crevices in a
long-past age.