Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at
first you almost thought some ambitious young artist,
in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate
chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation,
and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open
the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last
come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild,
might not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over
three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.
A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive
a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze
you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself
to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon
a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.--
It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.--It's the unnatural
combat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted heath.--
It's a Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up of
the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies
yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst.
That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop;
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even
the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own,
partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons
with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents