Aside from the quiet, sequestration, and conveniences of the philosopher’s study, it will be observed that among its many desirable features was that of its being “very pleasantly windowen” (très-plaisamment percé), the windows commanding a “farre-extending, rich, and unresisted prospect” (trois veuës de riche et libre prospect). Assuredly the sunshine and light that warmed and brightened the apartment, and the unlimited view of hill and plain, were a stimulus to the writer.
Fortunate is he who has a pleasing prospect to look in upon him—it invigorates and cheers like a cordial. Whatever the time of year, the distant hills, visible through my windows, are a source of companionship and charm. So constantly are they before me, I have begun to consider them as my own, a remote part of the garden and the grounds to which they form the frame. I love to watch their changing expression and note their play of light and shade. Meseems they almost resemble a human countenance in the varying sentiments they convey. Content and malcontent are as plainly expressed by their mobile curves as they are by the lines of the human face. Like the rest of us, in sunshine they smile, in storm they frown. They are warm, or cool, as the mood takes them; as they reflect or absorb the sky and atmosphere. For days they rest in absolute calm; again they recede, and, again, they advance. Mirroring every change of the day and of the passing seasons, they are a dial that tells the hour, the time of year to me. The sun salutes one side of their profile the first thing in the morning; his parting rays illumine the other side the last thing in the evening. They hasten the dawn, and prolong the twilight. The full moon rising from the far horizon behind them, silvers their wooded slopes ere it gilds the topmost gables of my house. They catch the first drops of the summer shower, and receive the first flakes of the November snow. The loveliest blues and purples seek them, drawing a semi-transparent veil over them. On hot summer noontides the cloud-flocks repose upon them, and the orange afterglow lingers long upon their tranquil heights. In spring the earliest violets carpet their sheltered places; in autumn they yield me the last blue gentian bloom. I see the wind lifting their green skirts, and fancy I hear his voice murmuring through their umbrageous depths. My hills ever catch and focus color, and toy and play with wind and sun. Whether shimmering in midsummer glare, or standing out against the wintry sky, or slumbering in the haze of the dreamy autumnal day, they are my finest landscape paintings. When the snow has spread its shroud over the silent fields they still speak to me in color—gray, bronze, and purple—by turns during the day; a kaleidoscope of tones when the sun sinks behind their serried ranks of trees.
Seeing them thus year after year they have come to possess a personality; and when a rarefied atmosphere brings them unusually near, I find myself casting an imaginary lasso at them to bring them still closer to me that I may stroke their lovely contours. So familiar have I become with them, I have only to look out of my windows, and I am treading their luminous heights, and am fanned by the breeze that perpetually blows upon their peaceful crests.
With the wind from the southeast, I hear the roar of the railroad trains, panting and steaming, coming and going along their slopes, leaving a trail of smoke to mark the passage of their flight. The ceaseless tide of travel ever hurries on. How many of those seated in the luxurious coaches note the beauty of my hills? Cloud-shadows chase each other, and hawks wheel over their summits, while the train speeds on, intent upon overtaking other hills and its remote destination: the beauty of my hills remains for me.
A knock at my study-door interrupts my musings, and my hills abruptly recede. Not that my friend Sherlock drives them away; he is so versatile and colorful himself that the charm of his presence and conversation takes the place of my hills. I never learned until to-day why he has remained a bachelor. It was only when conversing about the ideal home that the true reason occurred to me—he has failed, not in discovering the ideal woman, but the ideal architect to carry out his admirable conceptions of the perfect house; and rather than fall below his artistic standard he passively submits to fate, and awaits the architect who is to be.
“You seem to overlook the probability of my being referred to a committee inquirendo lunatico, should my views ever be carried out; and it seems dangerous to commit them to print,” was my friend’s rejoinder to a request that he present his views in detail.
“But the simple story of my house will at most be read by a few,” I replied; “and these few will charitably give us credit for good intentions; moreover the critics are not nearly as black as they are painted.”
“My ideas,” continued my friend, “fly so rudely in the face of all convention that people would consider the order of Nature reversed. ‘A kitchen in the front yard!’ I hear them say, ‘Away with him!’
“Nevertheless, had I the courage of my convictions, together with ten times as much money as I shall ever possess, I would build my house all front, and no rear!
“A capacious vestibule, say 20 × 20 feet, should be, not the entrance exactly, but a means of exclusion for unwelcome visitors. A door on one side should open to my lady’s reception-room where she should receive all formal and business calls; in short, every one whom she took no pleasure in seeing at all.