Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)Alger, Horatio, Jr.
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Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Forrest, Edwin, 1806-1872
This taste for nature, with the inexhaustible enjoyment and the refining
culture it yields, was his in a degree not common except with artists
and poets. While acting in Cleveland once in mid-winter, he persuaded a
friend to walk with him for a few miles early on a very cold morning.
Striding off, exulting in his strength, after an hour and a half he
paused on the edge of the lake, his blood glowing with the exercise, his
eyes sparkling with delight, while his somewhat overfat companion was
nearly frozen and panted with fatigue. Stretching his hand out towards
the magnificent expanse of scenery spread before them, he exclaimed,
“Bring your prating atheists out here, let them look on that, and then
say there is no God—if they can!”
An eminent New York lawyer, an intimate friend of Forrest, who had spent
his whole life in the city absorbed in the social struggle, was utterly
indifferent to the beauties of nature. He had never felt even the
loveliness of a sunset,—something which one would think must fill the
commonest mind with glory. Walking with him in the environs of the city
on a certain occasion when approaching twilight had caused the blue
chamber of the west to blaze with such splendors of architectural clouds
and crimsoned squadrons of war as no scenic art could ever begin to
mock, Forrest called the attention of his comrade to the marvellous
spectacle. “I have no doubt,” said the lawyer, “that I have seen a great
many of these things; but I never cared anything about them.” The
disciple of Shakspeare proceeded to discourse to the disciple of Coke
upon Littleton on the charm of natural scenery, its soothing and
delight-giving ministrations to a man of taste and sensibility, in a
strain that left a permanent impression on his hearer, who from that
time began to watch the phenomena of the outward world with a new
interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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