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Show The Majesty Of Nature There are some art treasures In this city which not many people know very much about. When the exploring expedition which went to look up the wonders dn the neighborhood of the Ancient Cliff-dwellers in southeastern Utah, in the spring of 1905, returned, they brought many photographs of scenery in that region. Col. E. F. Holmes was much struck with the photographs of the three natural bridges down thoro which a few explorers explor-ers have been telling about for years past, and gave Mr. H. L. A. Culmer, who was with the party, a commission to paint them. Mr. Culmer began the work, soon became Interested and a little lit-tle later inspired and exhausted his art upon them. They would attract, instant attention in the most exclusive gallery in the world; they are veritable masterpieces. Many of our people hero have seen them and, so far as we know, there has been but one opinion of them. This article is not put out as news here, but merely to emphasize the general gen-eral impression that the pictures have created. In point of fact, all other known natural bridges shrink into insignificance by comparison. Were one of these bridges to be transported here, and set up between the Temple and the Tabernacle, a person standing on West Temple street and looking look-ing below tho solemn arch of tho bridge, would have a full view of the Temple from base to above tho statue on the highest pinnacle, for it is 2G5 feet from the ground under the bridge to the bottom of he groundfloor of tho great span, while the distance between the abutments that support tho span is 335 feet. In vastness and in solemn I majesty, there is something awful in tho spectacle. spec-tacle. Even the lights that play upon, it, as if awed, quickly fall into the shadows around it. It is said that the silence of the desert sometimes some-times becomes so oppressive that the shadow of a Great fear seems brooding so low over it, that even bands of cattle are stampeded by it and flee before a noiseless terror that seems drawing near. In the same way, if one watching this, picture, concentrates his mind enough to drive away eyery other thought, then his nerves will be taxed a& never before. Under the massivonoss, under the lights and shades that clothe the solemn sandstone sand-stone framework of tho bridge and build fairy castles out of a great reef seen in perspective un der thesolemn arohj thoughts-begin t6 creep in of the ages that masterpiece has' been standing there in that tremendous solitude, of tho races that in the forgotten past stood awed before it, and tried to compute the power that upreared it, and tho purpose intended in the august creation, until unconsciously the memory of the ages melts away and one lives through all the advancing and receding reced-ing centuries since the first call of the Infinite kindled kin-dled the sunbeams into flame and set the winds and the waters to perform their work, for tho bridge was not upreared, but was part of a mountain, moun-tain, the less enduring portions of which the winds, the frosts and the noiseless grind of running run-ning water's have eroded away, leaving the immortal immor-tal part on Its adamantine abutments poised in sublimity and silence. It was the soul of the mountain, concealed until un-til what was perishable in the height melted from around It. Is it typical? What is. perishable within us is soon to disintegrate and disappear. Will there be left something that, out of the dross, will defy decay de-cay and shine immortal in the softer light of the Beyond? |