A Pendant to "The Domain of Arnheim"
DURING A pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the river counties of New
York, I found myself, as the day declined, somewhat embarrassed about the road I was
pursuing. The land undulated very remarkably; and my path, for the last hour, had wound
about and about so confusedly, in its effort to keep in the valleys, that I no longer knew in
what direction lay the sweet village of B ---, where I had determined to stop for the night.
The sun had scarcely shone --- strictly speaking --- during the day, which nevertheless,
had been unpleasantly warm. A smoky mist, resembling that of the Indian summer,
enveloped all things, and of course, added to my uncertainty. Not that I cared much about
the matter. If I did not hit upon the village before sunset, or even before dark, it was more
than possible that a little Dutch farmhouse, or something of that kind, would soon make
its appearance --- although, in fact, the neighborhood (perhaps on account of being more
picturesque than fertile) was very sparsely inhabited. At all events, with my knapsack for
a pillow, and my hound as a sentry, a bivouac in the open air was just the thing which
would have amused me. I sauntered on, therefore, quite at ease --- Ponto taking charge of
my gun --- until at length, just as I had begun to consider whether the numerous little
glades that led hither and thither, were intended to be paths at all, I was conducted by one
of them into an unquestionable carriage track. There could be no mistaking it. The traces
of light wheels were evident; and although the tall shrubberies and overgrown
undergrowth met overhead, there was no obstruction whatever below, even to the passage
of a Virginian mountain wagon --- the most aspiring vehicle, I take it, of its kind. The
road, however, except in being open through the wood --- if wood be not too weighty a
name for such an assemblage of light trees --- and except in the particulars of evident
wheel-tracks --- bore no resemblance to any road I had before seen. The tracks of which I
speak were but faintly perceptible --- having been impressed upon the firm, yet pleasantly
moist surface of --- what looked more like green Genoese velvet than any thing else. It
was grass, clearly --- but grass such as we seldom see out of England --- so short, so
thick, so even, and so vivid in color. Not a single impediment lay in the wheel-route ---
not even a chip or dead twig. The stones that once obstructed the way had been carefully
placed --- not thrown-along the sides of the lane, so as to define its boundaries at bottom
with a kind of half-precise, half-negligent, and wholly picturesque definition. Clumps of
wild flowers grew everywhere, luxuriantly, in the interspaces.
What to make of all this, of course I knew not. Here was art undoubtedly --- that did
not surprise me --- all roads, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; nor can I say that
there was much to wonder at in the mere excess of art manifested; all that seemed to have
been done, might have been done here --- with such natural "capabilities" (as they have it
in the books on Landscape Gardening) --- with very little labor and expense. No; it was
not the amount but the character of the art which caused me to take a seat on one of the
blossomy stones and gaze up and down this fairy --- like avenue for half an hour or more
in bewildered admiration. One thing became more and more evident the longer I gazed:
an artist, and one with a most scrupulous eye for form, had superintended all these
arrangements. The greatest care had been taken to preserve a due medium between the
