As far as the eye can see, there is a
serene stretch of yellow sand, without even a blade of grass to break
its awful immensity." (The artist, being on his favorite theme, took his
pipe out of his mouth for the first time, and spoke with warmth.) "Look
at that bit of desert, now. Does it not convey a perfect idea of
solitude and desolation?"
Marcus Wilkeson glanced at about ten feet of straight yellow paint
(which was all of the desert of Sahara not rolled up in the canvas), and
said that it did--which was perfectly true.
"There are one hundred feet more, which you don't see, just like it.
Another artist would have put in an oasis, or a stray hyena, or the
bleached bones of an unfortunate traveller. _I_ did not. Why? Another
would have worked up a sunset, or a moonrise, or a thunder storm, to
give variety to the sky. _I_ did not. Why? The sky over my desert is an
uninterrupted blue. There is not even a bird in it. There is nothing, in
short, either on the ground or in the air, to take away the mind of the
spectator, for one moment, from the sublime idea of a desert--an object
which, considered aesthetically, is one of the grandest in the universe.
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