There is perhaps no scenery in the world so ravishingly beautiful as that offered by those vast plains of northern Italy situated at the base of the RhÆtian Alps. A champaign elaborately tilled, and laid out into those regular divisions of meadow, corn-field, and vineyard, which make so much of the beauty of cultivated landscape; groves and belts of trees so disposed as to be productive of the highest effect; classic looking villas, villages and towns, with their surrounding orchards and pleasure-grounds; bright rivers winding their way through all this beauty till they lose themselves in those magic lakes, which, with their green banks kissed by the waters, and bordered on every winding promontory and inlet by belts of overshadowing trees, reflect the sunset splendors of the Alps, and seem, in every rainbow grotto and crystal palace mirrored in their lucid depths, meet homes for those genii of the waters with which a graceful superstition peoples their enchanted caverns. All these, with the back ground of gigantic mountains, pile on pile, that seem to raise a barrier from earth to heaven between this Paradise and a ruder world beyond, fill us with the idea of wandering amid some remnant of the scenery of the Golden Age, where of old, as the fables tell, the primeval deities used to dwell with a purer humanity, and in a younger and lovelier earth.

From a village situated at a considerable elevation on the surface of the slopes into which these smiling plains incline themselves as they approach the mountains, one bright spring evening, a troop of young girls might have been seen issuing, apparently as if broken loose from school, so joyous were their gestures, so wild their mirth, as with the vivacious grace belonging to the children of the South they bounded over the grass, some gliding in imitation of the motions of a dance, some skipping, some chasing others with the speed of the wind, till at a call from one, “to the water—to the water!” echoed by a dozen voices, they descended a hollow leading to the bed of the bright Ticino, and in a few moments were plunging and gliding in the stream.

One of them, apparently between fourteen and fifteen years of age, instead of following the example of her companions, had, in the excitement attending this operation, slipped away unperceived, and wandering listlessly along the windings of the river soon found herself out of hearing and sight. Proceeding on her way, and picking up a pebble or a flower just as it suited her, and stopping to observe every effective point of view in the landscape, with a narrowness of observation and sense of its beauty uncommon in one so young, she came to a ravine leading up from the side of the stream, which she ascended, till arriving on a high point that overlooked the channel of the river, she witnessed one of the most superb sunsets that ever gladdened an enthusiast’s eye. Amidst an array of purple clouds, fringed with silver, the sun was descending, gold colored, behind a peak of Mount Rosa, and suffusing the surrounding Alpine masses with a dim violet vapor. At her feet, and flowing in a direction opposite to the eye, was the river, now transformed into a stream of rich ruddy amber, with its sloping and picturesque banks and wooded islands, that diversified its brilliance with emerald shadows, taking its way in a hundred windings, whose succession she could trace, curve beyond curve, as it clove its course through the opening hills—far away, till, in the termination of the vista, gleamed the shining roofs of the Pania, with the white spire of its cathedral seeming to lose itself in the gold of the evening sky. To the left, immediately at the foot of the eminence where she stood, was the little white village, with its orchards and trim vineyards, and, beyond, those vast slopes on which the mountains lose themselves in the Italian plains. To the right, arose perpendicularly from the river a wall of sparkling granite rocks, now of the deepest vermilion in the alchemy of evening; and behind, towered grandly into the sky those white wildernesses of Julian Alps, receiving from their brethren, the RhÆtians, the reflections of the opposite sunset in a thousand tints of lingering rose.

A singular effect was produced on the girl by the contemplation of this scene. Her bosom heaved, her cheeks flushed, her eyes filled with tears. “Oh! for the voice of a poet,” said she, speaking to herself, “to celebrate these splendors in some immortal song! Or the hand of a painter, to retain them in undying hues, for a joy to the worshipers of beauty forever. Alas! they are fading—they shall soon be lost to the universe; and there is none here who, with the power of inhaling them into his spirit as I, hath the happier gift of reproducing them in some diviner form. Alas! I am weak, with no power but to feel; as when gazing on some noble statue—some magic scene—some surpassing human form—an irrepressible emotion seizes me, which, when I would invest with expression, my heart dies away in utter impotence!”

Ah! innocent soul, thou didst not then know that the first power of an artist is to feel; that in his susceptibility for emotion lie his strength and the spirit of his calling; and that the achievement of the painter, the poet, or the sculptor, is but the expression of that emotion which our common language is too weak to supply, and only acquired, like any other language, through practice and experience. The girl who mused thus was very beautiful, now rendered more so by the freshness and vivacity of her extreme youth. Long tresses of chestnut hair, braided across her temples and slightly twisted up behind, were then suffered to fall in ringlets over her neck. Her complexion was brilliantly fair, with that rather deep carmine tinge on cheek and lip common to the Teutonic race, on the confines of whose clime she was born; while her slender figure and regular features betrayed the vicinage of classic Italy. But the most remarkable feature were the eyes; they were large and of the deepest black, in whose serious, melting, intellectual expression we could read all the soul of Angelica Kauffmann.

Throwing herself on the grass, she gave way to a delicious reverie on the enchantments of the scene, which the twilight, the fading colors and the silence soon deepened into a sort of dream. She thought herself in the midst of a vast temple, whose dome expanded into the skyey concave above her head, lamp-lighted with its thousand stars. Its area, whose termination on any side she could not descry, seemed to extend into an interminable space, lost amid a wilderness of surrounding columns. By degrees she became aware of the presence of groups of majestic statues, that seemed, by some enchantment, one after another to strike her view, like the scenery of a diorama. Watching them attentively, she saw that though raised on pedestals, in the attitudes and repose of statuary, they were endowed with all the features of animated life, but a life more than human—it seemed immortal, divine; and she recognized in these forms the presence of that gifted and glorious company enshrined in the temple of the immortal heart of man. Amidst the group in whose immediate vicinity she found herself, stood “Rafaelle the Divine,” with that countenance of his so expressive of the spirit of the sainted religion whose attributes he has embodied in glorious painting, and his melancholy eyes filled with the presentiment of his early death. Angelo, grand and majestic like his own Moses, and a brow worthy of the conception of that great St. Peter’s—the temple of the Christian world. Murillo, glorifying in his aspect the stolid simplicity of that humble life whence he drew his origin, and the delineation of which he made peculiarly the subject of his design. Carracci, with that forsaken look when the child of genius, like, alas! too many of his calling, lay down to die of a broken heart. Titian, beautiful as his own Apollos—and many more. But among these her attention was directed in surprise to a conspicuous pedestal, deficient of its statue, whereon was engraven in large letters, on the granite of its base, the name of “Angelica Kauffmann.” Looking up at the same moment to the vast sky-blue dome above her head, she saw blazing directly over the vacant pedestal a large, bright, solitary star, that lighted the whole temple with its radiance. After a long riveted gaze toward it, she became slowly sensible of looking on the true sky, from which the sunset and the twilight had now quite faded, abandoning it to the deep cobalt blue of the approaching darkness. The statues had vanished; the pillars had resolved themselves into the surrounding trees of the landscape; and, instead of the temple, were the familiar features of the scenery, though now almost lost in the darkness, she had gazed upon before falling into slumber. Every thing had vanished except that bright, solitary star, which, though now restored to complete consciousness, she continued to gaze upon with eyes riveted by wonder and delight. Familiar with the geography of the heavenly world, she was wholly unable to account to herself for the appearance of this particular star, which differed in position and lustre from any of the heavenly bodies she had hitherto been familiar with. It was evidently some new comer, and the girl thought to herself of those presiding stars that were of old said to arise over the destinies of the great ones of the earth, and dreamed—who can tell in that hour—wild dreams to herself of future glory and renown.^[3]

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