Nature shaped them and not man; following winding paths and coming

suddenly upon leaping cascades and rustic bridges; finding sylvan lakes

where you expected them not; loitering through battered mediaeval castles

in miniature that seem hoary with age and yet were built a dozen years

ago; meditating over ancient crumbling tombs, whose marble columns were

marred and broken purposely by the modern artist that made them;

stumbling unawares upon toy palaces, wrought of rare and costly

materials, and again upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated furniture

would never suggest that it was made so to order; sweeping round and

round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse that is moved

by some invisible agency; traversing Roman roads and passing under

majestic triumphal arches; resting in quaint bowers where unseen spirits

discharge jets of water on you from every possible direction, and where

even the flowers you touch assail you with a shower; boating on a

subterranean lake among caverns and arches royally draped with clustering

stalactites, and passing out into open day upon another lake, which is

bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay with patrician barges that

swim at anchor in the shadow of a miniature marble temple that rises out

of the clear water and glasses its white statues, its rich capitals and

fluted columns in the tranquil depths. So, from marvel to marvel you

have drifted on, thinking all the time that the one last seen must be the

chiefest. And, verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until the last,

but you do not see it until you step ashore, and passing through a

wilderness of rare flowers, collected from every corner of the earth, you

stand at the door of one more mimic temple. Right in this place the

artist taxed his genius to the utmost, and fairly opened the gates of

592

The Innocents Abroad