gives so striking a description, that I will quote nearly the
whole of it.

"I turn with more pleasure to another work of Mr. Allston, even though
but few can ever have seen it, but which made upon my own mind, when I
saw it immediately after it was completed, an impression of grandeur and
beauty never to be effaced, and never recalled without new sentiments of
enthusiastic admiration. I refer to his grand landscape of 'Elijah in
the Desert,'--a large picture of perhaps six feet by four. It might have
been more appropriately named an Asian or Arabian Desert. That is to
say, it is a very unfortunate error to give to either a picture or a
book a name which raises false expectations; especially is this the case
when the name of the picture is a great or imposing one which greatly
excites the imagination. What could be more so than this, 'Elijah in the
Desert, fed by Ravens'? Extreme and fatal was the disappointment to
many, on entering the room, when, looking on the picture, no Elijah was
to be seen; at least you had to search for him among the subordinate
objects, hidden away among the grotesque roots of an enormous
banyan-tree; and the Prophet, when found at last, was hardly worth the
pains of the search. But as soon as the intelligent visitor had
recovered from his first disappointment, the objects which then
immediately filled the eye taught him, that, though he had not found
what he had been promised, a Prophet, he had found more than a Prophet,
a landscape which in its sublimity excited the imagination as
powerfully as any gigantic form of the Elijah could have done, even
though Michel Angelo had drawn it. It is meant to represent, and does
perfectly represent, an illimitable desert, a boundless surface of
barrenness and desolation, where Nature can bring forth nothing but
seeds of death, and the only tree there is dead and withered, not a leaf
to be seen nor possible. The only other objects, beside the level of the
desert, either smooth with sand or rough with ragged rock, are a range
of dark mountains on the right, heavy lowering clouds which overspread
and overshadow the whole scene, the roots and wide-spread branches of an
enormous banyan-tree, through the tortuous and leafless branches of
which the distant landscape, the hills, rocks, clouds, and remote plains
are seen. The roots of this huge tree of the desert, in all directions
from the main trunk, rise upward, descend, and root themselves again in
the earth,