The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-07-24
THE HonIzoxs sIGYnFIcANoE.
a sinEuInrIy Picturesque and ImRgi-
native Description.

To mount hin is TO lift with you some
thing lighter and brighter than your steps
or than any meaner burden. You lift tire
world, you raise the horizon you give
sisnay for the distance to stand up. Il IS
like the scene IN the Vatican when car
dinal, with his dramatic italian hands
bids he kuccnng group 10 arise. he does
more than bid them. He lifts them, ne
gathers them up. far and near, with the
upward gesture Of both arms, he taxes
them to their feet with cOmpuslon OF
his expressive force. Or II is as When
conductor takes mis- VioAns 20 SUCCESSIVE
nights Of music. You summon the sea,
you bring the mountains, the distance
unfold unloolEel for wings and take an
even fight. You are but a man lifting
his weight upon the upward ROAD; Out.
as you climb the circle OF the WorId
goes up to face you.
Not here or there, but with a definite
continuity. the unseen unfolds. THIS dis
tant hill out scars that less distant, but
all are on the wing, and the plain raises
its verge. All things follow and vail
upon your eyes. You aft these up not ~
the raising of your eyelds, but
the pilgrimage of your BODY. LlIt l mn
eyes to the mountains" 1t is then thdt
other mountains lift themselves to your
human eyes.
ID is the law whereby the eye and the
horizon answer one another that MAKES
the way up the hill to full of uniVersal
movement. All the landscape is on plI-
grimage. The town gathers itself closer,
and rs inner harbor literally comes to
hght the headlands repeat themselves
little cups within the treeless nils open
and show their farms. In the sea theIs
are many regions; a breeze tS at play lot d
mile or two, and the surface IS turned.
There are roads and curves In the blue ara
CHI ~
ney 10 the hight that has not its replies
in the steady motion of land and ocean.
Things rise together dixie a flock OF many
feathered birds.
But it is the horizon, more than all else
thar YOU have come in search OF. 1hdt
is your chief companion on your way. II Is
to unfit the horizon 70 the equality OF your
sight that you go high. You gave
distance worthy of the skies. There Is no
distance except the distance in the sky
to be seen from the level earth; but from
the hight there is to be seen the distance
of this world. The line is sent back INTO
the remoteness of light, verge is removed
beyond verge into distance that Is ehor-
nous and minute.
So delicate and so slender is the distant
horizon that nothing less near than queen
Nab and her chariot, when she drives IN
the very sense Of sight, can equal ats hne-
ness. Here on the edges OF your eyellds'
or there on the edges of the World-there
Is no other place, no place less near than
the one or less distant than the otner-
for things SO exqulsitely made, so thin, so
small and tender. The touches of her
passing, as close as dreams; or the ut
most vanishing of the forest or the ocean
in the white light between the earth ana
the air; nothing else is quite so intimate
and fine The extremities of a mountain
view have just such tint touches as the
closeness OF closed eyes shut in
On the horizon is the sweetest light.
Elsewhere color mars the simplicity OF the
light; but there color is effaced, not as
man effaces it, by a blur or darkness; but
by mere light The bluest sky disappears
on that shining edge; there is not sub
stance enough for color; the rim OF the
hill, Of the woodland, of the weadow-land
let it only be far enough-has the same
absorption of color, and even the dark
things drawn upon the bright edges of the
sky are lucid, the light is among them, and
they are mingled with 1t. The horizon
has il own way of making bright the PEN
ciled figures of forests, which are black
but luminous.
on the horizon, moreover, closes the
long perspective of the sky. There you
perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds is
not a wall but the underside of a floor
you see the clouds that repeat each other
grow smaller by distance; and you find a
new unity in the sky and earth when you
see them gather alike the great lines of
their designs to the same distant close
There is no longer an alien sky, tossed
up in unintelligible nights above a world
that il subject to ineligible perspective.
OF all the things that a great city fore
goes-that London, for instance, has fore
gone-the most to be regretted is the hori-
Zon; not the bark of the trees in it's right
color; not the spirits of the growing grass,
which has in some way escaped from the
parks; not the smell of the earth unming-
led with the odor of soot-but rather the
mere horizon. Not many times year is
it-even in the narrow way of the horizon
of a valley-vsible in London; and the
smoke OF one large town drifts so near to
the smoke of another throughout Eng
land, that there is not often now country
horizon as lucid as Constable's. And
when a horizon does not grow light toward
the verge, it grows dark and dull. No
doubt the sun makes a beautiful thing of
the London smoke at all times, and in
some places of the sky; but not there; not
where the soft sharp distance ought to
shine. To be dull there is to put all re-
lations and comparisons in the wrong and
to make the sky lawless.
A horizon dark with storm is another
thing. The weather darkens the line and
defines il, or ming,es IL with the raining
tlOuuS8 VI phAS IL Oul Win u mysterious
finger, or softly dims 1t, or blackens it
against a CLEAN of narrow sunshine in the
sky. The weather does not define it, or
ignore IL, as does the smoke. To live
amid the smoke is to live without dis
tance. To climb a hill there, is to lift
! anything, everything in the world, except
only that natural distance which has the
evident wings and Is readiest to rise. The
stormy horizon will take wing, and the
sunny. Go high enough, and you can
raise the light from beyond the shower.
and the shadow from behind the ray. only
the shapeless and Hfeless smoke disobevs
ana defeats the summons of the eyes.
Up at the top of the seaward hin yotr
first thought is one Of some compassion for
sailors, inasmuch' as they see but little Of
the sea. A child on the mere Channel
cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that
sailors never see in the Pacific; or on the
ocean side of the world; never in the SOIL
tude of the level waters, or rather in the
soltudes; for there is no unity of solttari-
ness in the narrow world OF the mariner
but a thousand little heeting solitudes
there follow one another with Eght foot