ittle; vastly impressive because of the exceptional surroundings
that magnify these magnificent monuments, unique in their design and
almost unparalleled in their picturesque and daring outline. Some of the
monoliths tremble and sway, or seem to sway; for they are balanced
edgewise, as if the gods had amused themselves in some infantile game,
and, growing weary of this little planet, had fled and left their toys
in confusion. The top-heavy and the tottering ones are almost within
reach; but there are slabs of rock that look like slices out of a
mountain--I had almost said like slices out of a red-hot volcano; they
stand up against the blue sky and the widespreading background in
brilliant and astonishing perspective.

I doubt if anywhere else in the world the contrasts in color and form
are more violent than in the Garden of the Gods. They are not always
agreeable to the eye, for there is much crude color here; but there are
points of sight where these columns, pinnacles, spires and obelisks,
with base and capital, are so grouped that the massing is as fantastical
as a cloud picture, and the whole can be compared only to a petrified
after-glow. I have seen pictures of the Garden of the Gods that made me
nearly burst with laughter; I mean color studies that were supremely
ridiculous in my eyes, for I had not then seen the original; but none of
these makes me laugh any longer. They serve, even the wildest and the
worst of them, to remind me of a morning drive, in the best of company,
through that grand garden where our combined vocabularies of delight and
wonderment were exhausted inside of fifteen minutes; and where we drove
on and on, hour after hour, from climax to climax, lost in speechless
amazement.

Glen Eyrie is the valley of Rasselas--I am sure it is. The Prince of
Abyssinia left the gate open when he, poor fool! went forth in search of
happiness and found it not. Now any one may drive through the domain of
the present possessor and admire his wealth of pictorial
solitude--without, however, sharing it further. If it were mine, would I
permit thus much, I wonder? Only the elect should enter there; and once
the charmed circle was complete, we would wall up the narrow passage
that leads to this terrestrial paradise, and you would hear no more from
us, or of us, nor we of you, or from you, forever.

On my first visit to Colorado Springs I made a little pilgrimage. I
heard that a gentle lady, whom I had always wishe