During the waits between acts at the
theatre, while studying the magnificent painting beyond the trouble of
the orchestra, I have been most impressed by the splendid variety which
the artist had got into his picture, where the spacious frame lent
itself to his passion for saying everything; but I remembered his
thronging fancies as meagre and scanty in the presence of the stupendous
reality before me. I have, for instance, not even mentioned the sea,
which swept smoother and smoother in toward the feet of those precipices
and grew more and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while
half a score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of
snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung
long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the view from the sea the
island is all, with its changing capes and promontories and bays and
inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the afternoon of our approach
it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of which we could only see one
leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic.
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