Theodore Winthrop

“ But the magnificence of Nature here can be felt without aid from the past. Historic drapery is not needed. Absolute beauty can be loved at first sight. To think our noblest thoughts, we go away from relics to solitude, to God, and to the future. ”

“ Men have not forgotten their conception of God at the Heart of the Andes, — the heart of the heart of the world, where its pulses beat hottest and strongest. And the Artist sets up his own symbol of faith in the church and the foreground cross, and recognizes here that religion whose civilization alone makes such a picture as his possible. ”

“ A city of citizens we should feel to be out of place here. Volcanoes may be suitable companions for the turbulent abodes of men, as men now are. A melodramatic little Vesuvius, threatening when it is not outraging, always discontented, and often an insurgent malecontent, grumbling and bellowing, “full of sound and fury,” a demoniac and revengeful being, — this is a fit emblem, of a modern capital. ”