She shows him,
that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched
with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her
incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent
by the magic of her sunsets. At Rome she opens vistas away from the
sepulchral, out into the wine-colored light of the Campagna, into
the peace gladdened by larks and the bleating of lambs; above are
pines,--Italian pines,--and across the path falls the still shadow of
blooming oleanders. She leads away from squalid towns, and gathers a
group of her children,--peasants, costumed in scarlet and gold, under
the grape-laden festoons of vines, while the now distant village glows
like cliffs of Carrara. How lavish she must have been of her old ideal
Spain, the while he dwelt in Granada!--the dance of the gypsies;
pomegranates heavy with ripeness hanging among the quivering glossy
leaves; olives gleaming with soft ashy whiteness, as the south-wind
wanders across their grove up to where the towers of the Alhambra lift
golden and pale lilac against the clear sky.
We have dwelt thus lengthily upon this primitive and apparently less
important branch of Landscape Art for several reasons: from a conviction
that its importance is, and is only apparently less; from the fact that
from it have been derived all other classes of landscape; and because a
comprehension of its scope and purpose aids more than any other agency
in understanding those of the pure and simple Landscape Art.
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