in size and color, till we can take a
farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset
clouds behind them for enchanted gardens hung with golden fruit. But
the most gorgeous effects are, as is usual with air-castles, created
out of nothing,--that is, nothing more substantial than air, mist, and
sun- or moon- or star-beams. Fine times the imagination has, riding on
purple and crimson rays, and building Islands of the Blest among
vapors that have just risen from the turbid waters of the Mississippi!
No Loudon or Downing is invoked for the contriving or beautifying of
these villa-residences and this landscape-gardening. Genius comes with
inspiration, as inspiration does with genius; and we are our own
architects and draughtsmen, rioting at liberty with Nature's splendid
palette at our command, and no thought of rule or stint. Why should we
not, in solider things, derive more aid, like the poor little
"Marchioness" of Dickens, from this blessed power of imagination?
Those who do so are always laughed at as unpractical; but are they not
most truly practical, if they find and use the secret of gilding over,
and so making beautiful or tolerable, things in themselves mean or
sad?

Once upon a time, then, the great State of Illinois was all under
water;--at least, so say the learned and statistical. If you doubt it,
go count the distinctly-marked ridges in the so-called bluffs, and see
how many years or ages this modern deluge has been subsiding. Where
its remains once lay sweltering under the hot sun, and sucking miasms
from his beams, now spread great green expanses, wholesome and
fertile, making the best possible use of sunbeams, and offering, by
their aid, every earthly thing that men and animals need for their
bodily growth and sustenance, in almost fabulous abundance.

The colored map of Illinois, as given in a nice, new book, called,
"Illinois as it is," looks like a beautiful piece of silk, brocaded in
green (prairies) on a brownish ground (woodland tracts),--the surface
showing a nearly equal proportion of the two; while the swampy lands,
designated by dark blue,--in allusion, probably, to the occasional
state of mind of those who live near them,--take up a scarce
appreciable part of the space. Long, straggling "bluffs," on the banks
of the rivers, occupy still less room; but they make, on land and
paper, an agreeable variety. People thus far go to them only for the
mineral wealth with which they a