Harriet Beecher Stowe

“ They are all kindness to me. Whenever I wish to see any thing, I have only to speak; or to know, I have only to ask. At breakfast every morning we compare notes, and make up our list of wants. My first, of course, was the Louvre. It is close by us. Think of it. To one who has starved all a life, in vain imaginings of what art might be, to know that you are within a stone's throw of a museum full of its miracles, Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman sculptors and modern painting, all there!
I scarcely consider myself to have seen any thing of art in England. ”

“ The objection to Gothic architecture, as compared with Greek, is, that it is less finished and elegant. So it is. It symbolizes that state of mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws of exact proportions and architectural refinement. It is Alpine architecture—vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting into flowers at every interval.
The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is a struggle in it, as of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture ”

“ Then came a home question—how the ladies of England compared with the ladies of America. "Now for it, patriotism," said I to myself; and, invoking to my aid certain fair saints of my own country, whose faces I distinctly remembered, I assured her that I had never seen more beautiful women than I had in America. Grieved was I to be obliged to add, "But your ladies keep their beauty much later and longer." This fact stares one in the face in every company; one meets ladies past fifty, glowing, radiant, and blooming, with a freshness of complexion and fulness of outline refreshing to contemplate. ”

“ Like the silent warfare of the sun on the glacier, is that overshadowing presence of Jesus, whose power, so still, yet so resistless, is now being felt through all the moving earth.
Those defiant waves of death-cold ice might as well hope to conquer the calm, silent sun, as the old, frozen institutions of human selfishness to resist the influence which he is now breathing through the human heart, to liberate the captive, to free the slave, and to turn the ice of long winters into rivers of life for the new heaven and the new earth. ”

“ Light and shadow are beautiful things, capable of a thousand blendings, softenings, and harmonizings, which one loves to have represented: the great Artist of all loves light and shadow; why else does he play such a magical succession of changes upon them through all creation? But for an artist to make the most solemn mystery of religion a mere tributary to the exhibition of a trick of art, is a piece of profanity. What was in this man's head when he painted this representation of the hour when his Maker was made flesh that he might redeem a world? Nothing but chiaro-scuro and foreshortening. ”

“ When we shall see a New England artist, with his easel, in the fields, seeking, hour after hour, to reproduce on the canvas the magnificent glories of an elm, with its firmament of boughs and branches,—when he has learned that there is in it what is worth a thousand Claudes—then the morning star of art will have risen on our hills. God send us an artist with a heart to reverence his own native mountains and fields, and to veil his face in awe when the great Master walks before his cottage door. ”

“ We pass again through the pine woods in the valley, and cross the Arve; then up the mountain side to where a tiny cascade throws up its feathery spray in a brilliant jet d'eau. Every body knows, even in our sober New England, that mountain brooks are a frisky, indiscreet set, rattling, chattering, and capering in defiance of all law and order, tumbling over precipices, and picking themselves up at the bottom, no whit wiser or more disposed to be tranquil than they were at the top; in fact, seeming to grow more mad and frolicsome with every leap. ”

“ The greatest men have always thought much of flowers. Luther always kept a flower in a glass, on his writing table; and when he was waging his great public controversy with Eckius, he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley—he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Witness the Midsummer Night's Dream. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he marshals the flowers, as in Lycidas and Comus. ”

“ Architecture never can, and never will, produce their like again. They give us aspiration in its highest form and noblest symbol, and wonderful was that mind which conceived them. This choir so darkly bright, its stalls and seats carved in black oak, its flame-like arches, gorgeous with evening light, were a preparation and excitement of mind. Yet it's remarkable about these old-time cathedrals, that while their is every grand and solemn effect of architecture, there is also always an abundance of subordinate parts, mean, tawdry, revolting, just like the whole system they represent. ”

“ These flowers seemed to me to be earth's raptures and aspirations —her better moments—her lucid intervals. Like every thing else in our existence, they are mysterious.
In what mood of mind were they conceived by the great Artist? Of what feelings of his are they the expression—springing up out of the dust, in these gigantic, waste, and desolate regions, where one would think the sense of his almightiness might overpower the soul? Born in the track of the glacier and the avalanche, they seem to say to us that this Almighty Being is very pitiful, and of tender compassion ”

“ With such thorough training of the sense of beauty, it may be easily seen that the facility of French enthusiasm in aesthetics is not, as often imagined, superficial pretence. The nerves of beauty are so exquisitely tuned and strung that they must thrill at every touch.
One sees this, in French life, to the very foundation of society. A poor family will give, cheerfully, a part of their bread money to buy a flower. The idea of artistic symmetry pervades every thing, from the arrangement of the simplest room to the composition of a picture. ”

“ The afternoon sun was throwing its level beams in between these many-colored ranges, and on one of them the ruins of an old Roman tower stood picturesquely prominent. The Simplon road could be seen, dividing the valley like an arrow.
I had gone on quite ahead of my company, and as my mule soberly paced downward in the almost perpendicular road, I seemed to be poised so high above the enchanting scene that I had somewhat the same sensation as if I were flying. I don't wonder that larks seem to get into such a rapture when they are high up in the air. ”

“ But all this while the sun has been withering the flowers the guide brought me; how they look! blue and white Canterbury bells, harebells, clochettes, all bedraggled and wilted, like a young lady who has been up all night at a ball.
"No, no," say I to the guide; "don't pick me any more. I don't want them. The fact is, if they are pretty I cannot help it. I must even take it out in looking as I go by."
One thing is evident; He who made the world is no utilitarian, no despiser of the fine arts, and no condemner of ornament ”

“ And why has not a man a right to dramatize in marble as well as on canvas, if he can produce a powerful and effective result by so doing? And even if by being melodramatic, as the terrible word is, he can shadow forth a grand and comforting religious idea—if he can unveil to those who have seen only the desolation of death, its glory, and its triumph—who shall say that he may not do so because he violates the lines of some old Greek artist? Where would Shakspeare's dramas have been, had he studied the old dramatic unities? ”

“ He looks in my face, with innocent wonder, takes the bridle on his arm, and goes on.
Now we have come to the little village of Wengern, whence the Wengern Alps take their name. How beautiful! how like fairyland! Up here, midway in air, is a green nook, with undulating dells, and shadowy, breezy nests, where are the cottages of the haymakers. The Delectable Mountains had no scene more lovely. Each house has its roof heavily loaded with stones. "What is that for?" I ask. "The whirlwinds," says my guide, with a significant turn of his hands. ”