The great Van Bnmmel himself never felt bigger nor
better.
It was in that loveliest season of the year, the Indian summer,--a week or
ten days of atmospheric perfection which the clerk of the weather allows us
as a compensation for our biting winter and rheumatic spring. The veiled
rays of the sun and the soft shadows produce the effect of a golden
moonlight, and make even Nature's shabbiest corners attractive. To be
out-of-doors with nothing to do, and nothing to think of but the mere
pleasure of existence, is happiness enough at such times. But I was looking
at a river panorama which is one of Nature's best efforts, I have heard;
and on that morning it seemed to me impossible that the world could show
anything grander.
It was very calm. The broad glittering surface of the river showed here and
there a slight ripple, when some breath of air touched it for a moment; but
wind there was none,--only a few idle breezes lounging about, waiting for
orders to join old Boreas in his next autumnal effort to crack his
cheeks. The bright-colored trees glowed on the mountain-sides like beds of
living coals.
"How the deuse," thought I, as I stared at them, "can a discerning public
be satisfied with Cole's pictures of 'American Scenery in the Fall of the
Year'? You see on his canvas, to be sure, red, green, orange, and so on,
the peculiar tints of the leaves; but Nature does more (and Cole does not):
she blends the variegated hues into one bright mass of bewitching color by
the magic of this soft, golden, hazy sunshine.
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