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ponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded. The boat glides
between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre
entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a
gleaming river throughout the full extent of their circuit. Meantime
the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gush
of entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet
odor,--there is a dream--like intermingling to the eye of tall
slender Eastern trees--bosky shrubberies--flocks of golden and crimson
birds--lily-fringed lakes--meadows of violets, tulips, poppies,
hyacinths, and tuberoses--long intertangled lines of silver
streamlets--and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of
semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle in
mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets,
and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the
Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the Gnomes.
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