The force of
this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it
involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any
purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic of
death. He thus explained:- Admit the earthly immortality of man to
have been the first intention. We have then the primitive
arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissful estate,
as not existent but designed. The disturbances were the preparations
for his subsequently conceived deathful condition.
"Now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the
landscape may be really such, as respects only the moral or human
point of view. Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly
effect a blemish in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed
at large- in mass- from some point distant from the earth's surface,
although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily
understood that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may
at the same time injure a general or more distantly observed effect.
There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to
humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order- our
unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the earth-angels, for
whose scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death-
refined appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by
God the wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres.
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