[6]Permission of “St. Nicholas.”
[7]Dean, as here used, means “a small valley.”
CHAPTER XIII.
NIGHT IN THE COURT OF HONOR.
T was a midsummer night in the Court of Honor; the crowds had vanished, and the air, the grounds, and the Lake were still. The Columbian Guards had retired from the weary duties of the day; the lights, one by one, had gone out; the constellations of electric splendors had passed away forever, for their renewal would be like the lighting of new stars.
The White City stood in the silence like Shinar Tower after the confusion, for if on the plains of Babylonia people began to speak many tongues, here the harmony of language found a prophetic expression again. The world had not built here a tower to touch the sky, from which men might enter heaven; but the beauty that fancy places in heaven was here, and into it people came and went away, and read here the fulfilment of earthly and celestial visions. The realities of Plato, Virgil, and Sir Thomas More were here. All the beautiful thoughts of creative art from the beginning of time here found expression. Egypt was here; Greece; Rome, in her long march through the world; the half-forgotten gods of the ancient world were here; Phidias was here; the Augustine age of the poets; the Roman age of colossal art.
The Peristyle was white in the starlight under the serene sky. The Columbus Quadriga, with its grand horses and Grecian grooms, seemed a thing of the Lake and sky; and the procession of heroes on the Peristyle was like a night march of the ghosts of the glorious sons of the world.
The Columbian Fountain was motionless, and Father Time sat at the helm of the barge of state, on which Columbia was enthroned, facing the stars and not the rainbows of spray and the gay gondolas. The sturdy Statue of Labor, with the plough horse and primitive harness, stood solitary by the grand basin; the swans moved to and fro on the lagoons, but all else was still life.
PERISTYLE, FROM THE AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.