The work will be emphatically original and
American, embracing characteristics that neither art nor literature have
yet dealt with, and producing new forms of artistic beauty from the
natural features of the Rocky-Mountain region, which Leutze seems to have
studied broadly and minutely. The garb of the hunters and wanderers of
those deserts, too, under his free and natural management, is shown as
the most picturesque of costumes. But it would be doing this admirable
painter no kind office to overlay his picture with any more of my
colorless and uncertain words; so I shall merely add that it looked full
of energy, hope, progress, irrepressible movement onward, all represented
in a momentary pause of triumph; and it was most cheering to feel its
good augury at this dismal time, when our country might seem to have
arrived at such a deadly stand-still.
It was an absolute comfort, indeed, to find Leutze so quietly busy at
this great national work, which is destined to glow for centuries on the
walls of the Capitol, if that edifice shall stand, or must share its
fate, if treason shall succeed in subverting it with the Union which it
represents. It was delightful to see him so calmly elaborating his
design, while other men doubted and feared, or hoped treacherously, and
whispered to one another that the nation would exist only a little
longer, or that, if a remnant still held together, its centre and seat of
government would be far northward and westward of Washington.
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