The Pleasures of Life

all that I have

over our ancestors than in the increased facilities of travel; but I hesitate to say this, not because our advant

"-excessive labor; and, as Skeat observes, it forcibly recalls

g able, so rapidly and with so little fatigue, to visit countries which were much less accessible to our ancestors. What a blessing it is that not our own islands only-our smiling fields and rich woods, the mountains that are full of peace and the rivers of joy, the lakes and heaths and hills, ca

e world belongs to him who has seen it. "But he that would make

monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns; and so the havens and harbors, antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, when any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities; armories,

doubt excellent; but for the moment I am thinking rather of an annual holiday, taken for the sake of rest and health; for fresh air and exe

ans and pictures, and yet the reality will burst on us like a revelation. This is true not o

put into words any characteristic of the original for which I was not prepared. It was not that they were larger; it was not that they differed in form, in color, or si

en us in the Old Testament. And what is true of the Old Testament is true of history generally. To those who have been in Athens or Rome, the history of Greece or I

ption, which brings out the salient points, than they would from actual, but unaided, inspection. The idea may gain in accuracy, in character, and even in detail, more than it misses in vividness. But, however this may be, for

ile traveling on a scientific mission in the Rocky Mountains, he was astonished to meet an aged French Abbé, and could not help

the arms of the Bon Dieu. I fancied one of the angels came and asked me, 'Well, M. l'Abbé how did you like the beautiful world you have just left?' And then it occurred to me that I who had been all my

rthy Abbé. But although it may not be possible for us to reach the Rocky Mountains

. Let me then try to illustrate this by pictures in words, as realized by one of our most illustrious countrymen; I will select refere

rs of Exercise in the Alps, is almost as

the earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever young, ever mighty-with the vigor of a thousand worlds still within him-the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky. It was he who raised aloft the waters which cut out these ravines; it was he who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity a plough to open out the valleys; a

of an army in line of battle and quiet as a street of tombs in a buried city." [2] I do not, however, borrow from him or from any o

er. At least there seems reasons to believe that the upper waters of the Valais fell at first into the Danube, and so into the Black Sea; subsequently joined the Rhine and the Thames, and so ran far n

ity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star;… and how ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust,

rush or its calmer moments, there is something which fascinates even more in the free

and that, as the winds take them, with all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of fountains … until at last … they find their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with quiet depth of clear water furrowi

s of the Mediterranean, which he loves so well, and the

ch the waves and sunbeams and shadows join. Again, in northern scenery, the rounded forms of full-foliaged trees suit the undulating country, with its gentle hills and brooding clouds; but in the South the spiky leaves and sharp branches of the olive carry out the defined outlines which are everywhere observable through the broader beauties of mountain and valley and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize this southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and women lived beneath the pure light of Phoebus, their ancestral god. Pallas protected them, and golde

nd polished garlands of tough sarsaparilla wed the shrubs with clinging, climbing arms; and here and there in sheltered nooks the vine shoots forth luxuriant tendrils bowed with grapes, stretching from branch to branch of mulberry or elm, flinging festoons on which young loves might sit and swing, or weaving a lattice-work of l

etch into the sky. Sometimes a little flake of blue is framed by olive boughs, sometimes a turning in the road reveals the whole broad azure calm below. Or, after toiling up a steep ascent we fall upon t

warmth of the South is

is delicious. I have re

iption of a tropical su

hat turneth all

ull daylight. For the next quarter of an hour this changes very little in character; when, suddenly, the sun's rim appears above the horizon, decking the dew-laden foliage with glittering gems sending gleams of golden light far into the woods, and waking up all nature to life and activity. Birds chirp and flutter about, parrots scream, monkeys chatter, bees hum among the flowers, and gorgeous butterflies flutter lazily along or sit with full expanded wings exposed to the warm and invigorating rays. The first hour of morning in the equatorial regions possesses a charm and a beauty that can never be

them; the green plain was dyed with a deeper green beneath them, and the shades of evening veiled the vast rents and fissures in their aged frames. As I looked back at them

ny glorious days: for the advantages of travel last through life; and often, as we sit at home, "some bright and perfec

er away. They are like exertion and rest, each the complement of the other; so that, though it may seem paradoxical, one of the greatest pleasures of travel is the ret

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