over

Ascending the mountain they slacken'd their pace, And the marvellous prospect each moment changed face. The breezy and pure inspirations of morn Breathed about them.  The scarp'd ravaged mountains, all worn By the torrents, whose course they watch'd faintly meander, Were alive with the diamonded shy salamander. They paused o'er the bosom of purple abysses, And wound through a region of green wildernesses; The waters went whirling above and around, The forests hung heap'd in their shadows profound. Here the Larboust, and there Aventin, Castellon, Which the Demon of Tempest, descending upon, Had wasted with fire, and the peaceful Cazeaux They mark'd; and far down in the sunshine below, Half dipp'd in a valley of airiest blue, The white happy homes of the valley of Oo, Where the age is yet golden. And high overhead The wrecks of the combat of Titans were spread. Red granite, and quartz; in the alchemic sun, Fused their splendors of crimson and crystal in one; And deep in the moss gleam'd the delicate shells, And the dew linger'd fresh in the heavy harebells; The large violet burn'd; the campanula blue; And Autumn's own flower, the saffron, peer'd through The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras; And fragrant with thyme was the delicate grass; And high up, and higher, and highest of all, The secular phantom of snow! O'er the wall Of a gray sunless glen gaping drowsy below, That aerial spectre, reveal'd in the glow Of the great golden dawn, hovers faint on the eye And appears to grow in, and grow out of, the sky

Owen Meredith
Lucile

So a little later, leaving Bess neighing behind in the camp, up the long, dusty road Jane and Job rambled on, past the pasture and the Royal Arches, on along the river bank, and, turning away to the left, climbed on the rise of ground into that nook where the South Dome seems almost to meet the Half Dome, and stood by the glassy waters of Mirror Lake. In that early hour before the ripples had stirred the surface, this lakelet at the foot of the Half Dome was worthy of all its romantic fame. Nine times that morning Job and Jane saw the sun rise over the rounded peak of the Half Dome, as they followed slowly the shores of the lake from sun-kissed beach to shadow. Jane went into ecstasies. Was it not beautiful! What a picture! The clear-cut rocky mountain, its low edges fringed with trees, its top so bare, the blue sky and passing clouds, that bright spot which rose so quickly far back of the topmost turn of the Dome, all mirrored at their feet.

Frederick Vining Fisher
The Transformation of Job

I hurried onward—down, down, down. More streams came in; then there was a bridge, a few pine logs thrown over the water; but they gave me comfort, for savages do not make bridges. Then I had a treat such as I can never convey on paper—a moment, perhaps, the most striking and unexpected in my whole life—the one I think that, with some three or four exceptions, I would most gladly have again, were I able to recall it. I got below the level of the clouds, into a burst of brilliant evening sunshine, I was facing the north-west, and the sun was full upon me. Oh, how its light cheered me! But what I saw! It was such an expanse as was revealed to Moses when he stood upon the summit of Mount Sinai, and beheld that promised land which it was not to be his to enter. The beautiful sunset sky was crimson and gold; blue, silver, and purple; exquisite and tranquillising; fading away therein were plains, on which I could see many a town and city, with buildings that had lofty steeples and rounded domes. Nearer beneath me lay ridge behind ridge, outline behind outline, sunlight behind shadow, and shadow behind sunlight, gully and serrated ravine. I saw large pine forests, and the glitter of a noble river winding its way upon the plains; also many villages and hamlets, some of them quite near at hand; and it was on these that I pondered most. I sank upon the ground at the foot of a large tree and thought what I had best do; but I could not collect myself. I was quite tired out; and presently, feeling warmed by the

The road between Vietri and Amalfi is justly celebrated as one of the most lovely pieces of coast scenery in Italy. Its only rivals are the roads from Castellammare to Sorrento, from Genoa to Sestri, and from Nice to Mentone. Each of these has its own charm; and yet their similarity is sufficient to invite comparison: under the spell of each in turn, we are inclined to say, This then, at all events, is the most beautiful. On first quitting Vietri, Salerno is left low down upon the sea-shore, nestling into a little corner of the bay which bears its name, and backed up by gigantic mountains. With each onward step these mountain-ranges expand in long arial line, revealing reaches of fantastic peaks, that stretch away beyond the plain of Pstum, till they end at last in mist and sunbeams shimmering on the sea. On the left hand hangs the cliff above the deep salt water, with here and there a fig-tree spreading fanlike leaves against the blue beneath. On the right rises the hillside, clothed with myrtle, lentisk, cistus, and pale yellow coronilla--a tangle as sweet with scent as it is gay with blossom. Over the parapet that skirts the precipice lean heavy-foliaged locust-trees, and the terraces in sunny nooks are set with lemon-orchards. There are but few olives, and no pines. Meanwhile each turn in the road brings some change of scene--now a village with its little beach of grey sand, lapped by clearest sea-waves, where bare-legged fishermen mend their nets, and naked boys bask like lizards in the sun--now

John Symonds
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete

What a sunset! how golden! how beautiful! The sun just disappearing, and the narrow liny clouds, which a few minutes ago lay like soft vapoury streaks along the horizon, lighted up with a golden splendour that the eye can scarcely endure, and those still softer clouds which floated above them wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms, as thin and changeful as summer smoke, now defined and deepened into grandeur, and edged with ineffable, insufferable light! Another minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears, and the sky above grows every moment more varied and more beautiful as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks, and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-sparrow. To look up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never to be described and never forgotten. My heart swells and my eyes fill as I write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature, and the unspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment so pure, so peaceful, and so intense before the meanest and the lowliest of His creatures.

Mary Russell Mitford
Our Village

It is late afternoon, and the westering sun leaves the great bulk of Monte Faito in deep shadow, casting only here and there a fleck of warm gold light on the pines that clothe some shoulder, and throwing into deeper shade the ravines and scars which are chiselled out of his grey flanks. Yet even in the dark clefts there are gleams of yellow broom or cytisus; for the cuckoo is calling all over the sunny country, the trees are in their brightest leaf, and all the slopes of oak and chestnut that sweep down to the margin of the bay are like a cataract of vivid green tumbling down the mountain. Here, on the summit, it is very still. The silence of the mountains holds the air, and scarce a bird twitters in the gold light. The ridge of Faito, like a gigantic buttress, cuts off all the western promontory towards Sorrento, and falls into the sea across the peak of Ischia.

Arthur H. Norway
Naples Past and Present

Some trifling errand which he had used as a pretext for his journey brought him several miles along the range, and when he was actually starting down the mountain, his vengeance still muzzled, his ingenuity at fault, his courage faltering, all the intention of his journey merged in its subterfuge, he found himself upon the road which led past the Cayces' house, and in many serpentine windings down the long jagged slopes to the base. Noontide was near. The shadows were short. He heard the bees droning. The far-away mountains were of an exquisite ethereal azure, discrediting the opaque turquoise blue of the sky. The dark wooded coves had a clear distinctness of tone and definiteness of detail, despite the distance. The harmonies of colour that filled the landscape culminated in a crimson sumach growing hard by in a corner of a rail fence. The little house was still. The muffled tread of his horse's hoofs in the deep, dry sand did not rouse the sleeping hounds under the porch. The vines clambering to its roof were full of tiny yellow gourds; he could see through the gaps Dorinda's spinning-wheel against the wall. A hazy curl of smoke wreathed upward from the chimney with a deliberate grace in the sunshine. He smelled the warm fragrance of the apples in the orchard at the rear, stretching along the mountain side. The corn that Dorinda had ploughed on the steep slope was high, and waved above the staked and ridered fence. There were wild blue morning glories among it, the blossom still open here and there under a

Charles Egbert Craddock
The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains

There were fine sunsets even in the square, sometimes. One could only see parts of them, however, between the chimneys and over the roofs. From the kitchen windows one could not see them at all, and could only guess that they were going on because the bricks looked warm and the air rosy or yellow for a while, or perhaps one saw a blazing glow strike a particular pane of glass somewhere. There was, however, one place from which one could see all the splendor of them: the piles of red or gold clouds in the west; or the purple ones edged with dazzling brightness; or the little fleecy, floating ones, tinged with rose-color and looking like flights of pink doves scurrying across the blue in a great hurry if there was a wind. The place where one could see all this, and seem at the same time to breathe a purer air, was, of course, the attic window. When the square suddenly seemed to begin to glow in an enchanted way and look wonderful in spite of its sooty trees and railings, Sara knew something was going on in the sky; and when it was at all possible to leave the kitchen without being missed or called back, she invariably stole away and crept up the flights of stairs, and, climbing on the old table, got her head and body as far out of the window as possible. When she had accomplished this, she always drew a long breath and looked all round her. It used to seem as if she had all the sky and the world to herself. No one else ever looked out of the other attics. Generally the skylights were closed; but even if they were propped open to admit air,

Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess

The strange light of these northern zones was gently stealing over an immense sea of clear, perfectly calm, glassy water, which enabled us to locate the whiter coloured rocks at enormous depths. A fleecy line of cloud hung lazily over the snow-capped mountains. The Great Bear nearly stood on his head, and the Pole Star seemed to be almost over us. The other stars shone with icy cold brilliance and refused to vanish, though the sun had begun to rise. And such a rising! We could not see that welcome giver of warmth and life, but the beautiful orange and purple halo embraced half the world. From its centre shot upwards huge, long yellow streamers which penetrated the darkness surrounding the stars and passed beyond into never-ending space. Gradually these streamers took a more slanting angle until they touched the highest peaks and drove the cloud lower and lower down the side of the mountains. I have been on the Rigi under similar conditions, but there is nothing in the world like an autumn sunrise on Lake Baikal. I stopped the train ostensibly to allow water to be obtained for breakfast, but really to allow the men to enjoy what was in my opinion the greatest sight in the world. Some of the men were as entranced as myself, while others (including officers) saw nothing but plenty of clean fresh water for the morning ablutions. We all have our several tastes even in His Majesty's Army.

By the end of June the snow on land was fast disappearing, and blue lakes began to appear amongst the white plains and hummocks of the sea. But those were weary days of waiting even when warmer weather enabled us to live altogether in our hut without taking shelter in the chief's malodorous _yarat_. For the former was crowded all day with natives, who used it as a kind of club, and left us souvenirs every night in the shape of a stifling stench and swarms of vermin. As time wore on the heat in our heavy furs became insupportable, but frequent and sudden changes of temperature rendered it impossible to discard them altogether. For often the sun would be blazing at midday with a temperature of 60 deg. in the shade, and a few minutes later we would be cowering over the stove listening to the howling of the wind and the rattle of sleet against the wooden walls. This would last perhaps an hour or two, and then the sky would again become blue and cloudless, the sunshine as powerful as before. One day in early June is thus described in my journal: "Clear, cloudy, warm, cold, windy, calm, sunshine, fog and a little rain!" The wind troubled us most, for here there is no happy medium between a dead calm and a tearing gale, and the latter occurred on an average every second day. Northerly and north-westerly winds prevailed, and we whistled in vain for a southerly buster to clear the coast of ice. And yet notwithstanding our many miseries there were pleasant days, still and sunlit, when I would stroll to the summit of a

Harry de Windt
From Paris to New York by Land

When four days out, the "Sumter" captured her first prize. She was a fine ship, the "Golden Rocket" of Maine, six hundred and ninety tons. With the United States flag fluttering at the peak, she came sailing proudly towards her unsuspected enemy, from whose peak the red flag of England was displayed as a snare. When the two vessels came within a mile of each other, the wondering crew of the merchantman saw the English flag come tumbling down, while a ball of bunting rose quickly to the peak of the mysterious stranger, and catching the breeze floated out, showing a strange flag,--the stars and bars of the Confederacy. At the same minute a puff of smoke from the "Long Tom" amidships was followed by a solid shot ricochetting along the water before the dismayed merchantman, and conveying a forcible, but not at all polite, invitation to stop. The situation dawned on the astonished skipper of the ship,--he was in the hands of "the Rebels;" and with a sigh he brought his vessel up into the wind, and awaited the outcome of the adventure. And bad enough the outcome was for him; for Capt. Semmes, unwilling to spare a crew to man the prize, determined to set her on fire. It was about sunset when the first boat put off from the "Sumter" to visit the captured ship. The two vessels were lying a hundred yards apart, rising and falling in unison on the slow rolling swells of the tropic seas. The day was bright and warm, and in the west the sun was slowly sinking to the meeting line of sky and ocean.

Willis J. Abbot
The Naval History of the United States

"And it came to pass that, one morning, I found myself extended on the bank of a river.  It was a beautiful morning of early spring; small white clouds were floating in the heaven, occasionally veiling the countenance of the sun, whose light, as they retired, would again burst forth, coursing like a racehorse over the scene--and a goodly scene it was! Before me, across the water, on an eminence, stood a white old city, surrounded with lofty walls, above which rose the tops of tall houses, with here and there a church or steeple.  To my right hand was a long and massive bridge, with many arches and of antique architecture, which traversed the river.  The river was a noble one; the broadest that I had hitherto seen.  Its waters, of a greenish tinge, poured with impetuosity beneath the narrow arches to meet the sea, close at hand, as the boom of the billows breaking distinctly upon a beach declared.  There were songs upon the river from the fisher-barks; and occasionally a chorus, plaintive and wild, such as I had never heard before, the words of which I did not understand, but which at the present time, down the long avenue of years, seem in memory's ear to sound like 'Horam, coram, dago.' Several robust fellows were near me, some knee-deep in water, employed in hauling the seine upon the strand.  Huge fish were struggling amidst the meshes--princely salmon--their brilliant mail of blue and silver flashing in the morning beam; so goodly and gay a scene, in truth, had never greeted my boyish eye.

Edward Thomas
George Borrow

It would have demanded the poetic passion of some joyous Elizabethan lyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly phrase Paula's presentation of herself at this moment of absolute abandonment to every muscular whim that could take possession of such a supple form. The white manilla ropes clung about the performer like snakes as she took her exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on. Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life of beauty in woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real and living sort as this. A recollection of his vow, together with a sense that to gaze on the festival of this Bona Dea was, though so innocent and pretty a sight, hardly fair or gentlemanly, would have compelled him to withdraw his eyes, had not the sportive fascination of her appearance glued them there in spite of all. And as if to complete the picture of Grace personified and add the one thing wanting to the charm which bound him, the clouds, till that time thick in the sky, broke away from the upper heaven, and allowed the noonday sun to pour down through the lantern upon her, irradiating her with a warm light that was incarnadined by her pink doublet and hose, and reflected in upon her face. She only required a cloud to rest on instead of the green silk net which actually supported her reclining figure for the moment, to be quite Olympian; save indeed that in place of haughty effrontery there sat on her countenance only the healthful sprightliness of an English girl.

Thomas Hardy
A Laodicean

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Life On The Mississippi, Complete

The boy climbed upon her knee and sat there, leaning against her as he loved to do. His eyes rested on the far edge of the farthest purple moor, behind which the sun seemed to be slipping away into some other world he knew not of. The little clouds floating in the high blue sky were rosy where they were not golden; a flock of rooks was flying slowly homeward over the tree-tops, cawing lazily as they came. A great and beautiful stillness seemed to rest on all the earth, and his little mind was full of strange ponderings, leading him through labyrinths of dreams he would remember and comprehend the deep meaning of only when he was a man. Somehow all his thoughts were trooping round about a rich and brilliant figure which was a sort of image standing to him for the personality of his Most Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second--the King who was not quite a King, though all England looked to him, and he could lead it to good or evil.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
His Grace of Osmonde

The sun was sinking fast behind the mountains, turning their slabbed sides and soaring pinnacles to giant shields and spears of fire. Beneath their mass, shadows—forerunners of the night—crept over the forests and the crested rollers, whilst further from him the ocean heaved in a rosy glow. Above, the ever-changing vault of heaven was of a beauty that no brush could paint. On a ground-work of burning red were piled, height upon height, deep ridges of purples and of crimsons. Nearer the horizon the colours brightened to a dazzling gold, till at length they narrowed to the white intensity of the half- hidden eye of the sun vanishing behind the mountains; whilst underlying the steady splendour of the upper skies flushed soft and melting shades of rose and lilac. Blue space above him was broken up by fantastic clouds that floated all on fire, and glowed like molten metal. The reflection, too, of all these massed and varied lights in the azure of the eastern skies was full of sharp contrasts and soft surprises, and a travelling eagle, sailing through space before them, seemed to gather all their tints upon his vivid wings, and, as he passed away, to leave a rainbow track of broken light.

"The air was calm," said the Moon; "the water was transparent as the purest ether through which I was gliding, and deep below the surface I could see the strange plants that stretched up their long arms towards me like the gigantic trees of the forest. The fishes swam to and fro above their tops. High in the air a flight of wild swans were winging their way, one of which sank lower and lower, with wearied pinions, his eyes following the airy caravan, that melted farther and farther into the distance. With outspread wings he sank slowly, as a soap bubble sinks in the still air, till he touched the water. At length his head lay back between his wings, and silently he lay there, like a white lotus flower upon the quiet lake. And a gentle wind arose, and crisped the quiet surface, which gleamed like the clouds that poured along in great broad waves; and the swan raised his head, and the glowing water splashed like blue fire over his breast and back. The morning dawn illuminated the red clouds, the swan rose strengthened, and flew towards the rising sun, towards the bluish coast whither the caravan had gone; but he flew alone, with a longing in his breast. Lonely he flew over the blue swelling billows."

Hans Christian Andersen
Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

The flames crackled on, the neighbors still played their cribbage. Still was the day bright, but the shrinking wedge of sun had gone entirely from the window-sill. Half-past Full had drawn from his pocket a mouthorgan, breathing half-tunes upon it; in the middle of "Suwanee River" the man who sat in the corner laid the letter he was beginning upon the heap on his knees and read no more. The great genial logs lay glowing, burning; from the fresher one the flames flowed and forked; along the embered surface of the others ran red and blue shivers of iridescence. With legs and arms crooked and sprawled, the buccaroos brooded, staring into the glow with seldom-winking eyes, while deep inside the clay the spirit spoke quietly. Christmas Day was passing, but the sun shone still two good hours high. Outside, over the snow and pines, it was only in the deeper folds of the hills that the blue shadows had come; the rest of the world was gold and silver; and from far across that silence into this silence by the fire came a tinkling stir of sound. Sleighbells it was, steadily coming, too early for Bolles to be back from his school festival.

Owen Wister
The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories

It was a dull afternoon in February when we left Nice, and drove across the mountains to Mentone. Over hill and sea hung a thick mist. Turbia's Roman tower stood up in cheerless solitude, wreathed round with driving vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in a chaos between sea and sky. Sometimes the fog broke and showed us Villafranca, lying green and flat in the deep blue below: sometimes a distant view of higher peaks swam into sight from the shifting cloud. But the whole scene was desolate. Was it for this that we had left our English home, and travelled from London day and night? At length we reached the edge of the cloud, and jingled down by Roccabruna and the olive-groves, till one by one Mentone's villas came in sight, and at last we found ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next day and the next night, we heard the hoarse sea beat and thunder on the beach. The rain and wind kept driving from the south, but we consoled ourselves with thinking that the orange-trees and every kind of flower were drinking in the moisture and waiting to rejoice in sunlight which would come.

John Symonds
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete

The only article of clothing I had to cover my nakedness, was my jacket; for the body of my shirt, I had left on one of the Keys, fearing that the blood stains upon it, might bring on me some unjust suspicion. My numerous sores, owing to the alternate influence of heat and fresh water, had now become so offensive as to occasion a violent retching, that nearly overcame the feeble powers of my stomach; and had it not been for my providential supply of limes, that afterward, in some degree corrected their foetor, I must have laid me down by this log, a mass of corruption, and given my body up a prey to the birds and wild beasts of the forest. The reader will not think this an exaggeration; for while I was sitting here, the numerous Turkey-buzzards that were roosting over my head, attracted by my offensive smell, alighted within a few feet of me, and began to attack each other with as much ferocity as if they were already contending for their prey. I arose, as if to convince them that I yet possessed the power of motion; though I doubted within myself whether they would not have possession of me before the setting of another sun. But onward I travelled as far and as fast as my feeble condition would permit, until it was too dark to follow the path, when I laid down and passed a restless night, annoyed, as usual, with moschetoes. In the morning I arose feeble and dejected; and in my prayers, which I had daily addressed to HIM whose mercy-seat had so often covered me from the tempest, and

Daniel Collins
Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates,

There was no change in that sky from its state an hour before, except that perhaps it had lightened a little as the sun climbed higher behind that impenetrable dusky shroud. Hills, grass, men’s faces--all bore to the priest’s eyes the look of unreality; they were as things seen in a dream by eyes that roll with sleep through lids weighted with lead. Even to other physical senses that unreality was present; and once more he remembered his dream, thankful that that horror at least was absent. But silence seemed other than a negation of sound, it was a thing in itself, an affirmation, unruffled by the sound of footsteps, the thin barking of dogs, the murmur of voices. It appeared as if the stillness of eternity had descended and embraced the world’s activities, and as if that world, in a desperate attempt to assert its own reality, was braced in a set, motionless, noiseless, breathless effort to hold itself in being. What Silvester had said just now was beginning to be true of this man also. The touch of the powdery soil and the warm pebbles beneath the priest’s bare feet seemed something apart from the consciousness that usually regards the things of sense as more real and more intimate than the things of spirit. Matter still had a reality, still occupied space, but it was of a subjective nature, the result of internal rather than external powers. He appeared to himself already to be scarcely more than a soul, intent and steady, united by a thread only to the body and the world with which he was yet in relations. He knew that the appalling

He reached the stream at a spot where it flowed, still and clear, beneath a birch wood. A few of the leaves were green, but most of them gleamed a delicate saffron among the gray and silver stems, and the ground beneath was flecked with yellow. Behind the trees rough, lichened rock and stony slopes ran up to a bare ridge, silhouetted against the roseate glow of the morning sky. The sun had not risen, the water lay in shadow; it was very quiet and rather cold, and Lisle was surprised to see Millicent Gladwyne picking her way cautiously over a bank of stones. It was only her movements that betrayed her, for her neutral-tinted attire harmonized with the background; but when she caught sight of him she left the foot of the slope she was skirting and came directly toward him. He thought she looked wonderfully fresh and wholesome, and he noticed that she carried a small camera.

Harold Bindloss
The Long Portage

In the afternoon we walked through a grand pine forest to the western brow of the mountain, where a view opened which it would require a wonderful power of the imagination for you to see in fancy, as I did in reality. From the height where we stood, the view was uninterrupted to the Mediterranean, a distance of more than seventy miles; a valley watered by a brunch of the Arno swept far to the east, to the mountains near the Luke of Thrasymene; northwestwards the hills of Carrara bordered the horizon; the space between these wide points was filled with mountains and valleys, all steeped in that soft blue mist which makes Italian landscapes more like heavenly visions than realities. Florence was visible afar off, and the current of the Arno flashed in the sun. A cool and almost chilling wind blew constantly over the mountain, although the country below basked in summer heat. We lay on the rocks, and let our souls luxuriate in the lovely scene till near sunset. Brother Placido brought us supper in the evening, with his ever-smiling countenance, and we soon after went to our beds in the neat, plain chambers, to get rid of the unpleasant coldness.

Then two of the sailors got into the little boat belonging to the Kangaroo, in which Augusta had escaped, and rowed her and Dick away from that hateful shore to where the whaler--a fore-and-aft-schooner--was lying at anchor. As they drew near, she saw the rest of the crew of the Harpoon, among whom was a woman, watching their advent from the deck, who, when she got her foot upon the companion ladder, one and all set up a hearty cheer. In another moment she was on deck--which, notwithstanding its abominable smell of oil, seemed to her the fairest and most delightful place that her eyes had ever rested on--and being almost hugged by Mrs. Thomas, a pleasant-looking woman of about thirty, the daughter of a Suffolk farmer who had emigrated to the States. And then, of course, she had to tell her story all over again; after which she was led off to the cabin occupied by the captain and his wife (and which thenceforth was occupied by Augusta, Mrs. Thomas, and little Dick), the captain shaking down where he could. And here, for the first time for nearly a week, she was able to wash and dress herself properly. And oh, the luxury of it! Nobody knows what the delights of clean linen really mean till he or she has had to dispense with it under circumstances of privation; nor have they the slightest idea of what a difference to one's well-being and comfort is made by the possession or non-possession of an article so common as a comb. Whilst Augusta was still combing out her hair with sighs of delight, Mrs. Thomas knocked at

H. Rider Haggard
Mr. Meeson's Will

The time to see this square is in evening twilight--that wonderful hour after sunset--when the people are strolling on the pavement, polished to a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and when the cavalry soldiers group themselves at the angles under the lamp-posts or beneath the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the Palace. This is the magical mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the picturesque in all the towns of Italy, the hour which, by its tender blendings of sallow western lights with glimmering lamps, casts the veil of half shadow over any crudeness and restores the injuries of Time; the hour when all the tints of these old buildings are intensified, etherealised, and harmonised by one pervasive glow. When I last saw Piacenza, it had been raining all day; and ere sundown a clearing had come from the Alps, followed by fresh threatenings of thunderstorms. The air was very liquid. There was a tract of yellow sunset sky to westward, a faint new moon half swathed in mist above, and over all the north a huge towered thundercloud kept flashing distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of the West, forced down and reflected back from that vast bank of tempest, gave unearthly beauty to the hues of church and palace--tender half-tones of violet and russet paling into greys and yellows on what in daylight seemed but dull red brick. Even the uncompromising facade of S. Francesco helped; and the Dukes were like statues of the 'Gran Commendatore,' waiting for Don Giovanni's invitation.

John Addington Symonds
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece

Flank Hall, which for a hundred years had been called "the new hall," was a seemly Georgian residence, warm in colour, with some quaint woodwork; and like most such buildings in Essex, it made a very happy marriage with the landscape. Its dormers and fine chimneys glowed amid the dark bare trees, and they alone would have captivated a Londoner possessing those precious attributes, fortunately ever spreading among the enlightened middle-classes, a motor-car, a cultured taste in architecture, and a desire to enter the squirearchy. Audrey loathed the house. For her it was the last depth of sordidness and the commonplace. She could imagine positively nothing less romantic. She thought of the ground floor on chill March mornings with no fires anywhere save a red gleam in the dining-room, and herself wandering about in it idle, at a loss for a diversion, an ambition, an effort, a real task; and she thought of the upper floor, a mainly unoccupied wilderness of iron bedsteads and yellow chests of drawers and chipped earthenware and islands of carpets, and her mother plaintively and weariedly arguing with some servant over a slop-pail in a corner. The images of the interior, indelibly printed in her soul, desolated her.

Well, dear Family, here I am at sea, and everything is fine. At noon on Saturday our tugs pulled us away from the dock ahead of the "Prinzes Juliana" which lay alongside. Great waving of handkerchiefs between the blue-hatted crowds of Y.M.C.A. girls on both ships. The harbor was misty and the sky line of New York was very beautiful and shadowy. As we steamed out we passed the "Baltic" coming in, laden with troops. The boys were wild with enthusiasm at returning home. Many had climbed way up the rigging and as we passed they all cheered and we cheered back, and handkerchiefs fluttered and hats were waved. Then we went by the Statue of Liberty and out to sea. Before long the deck was covered with tired Y.M.C.A. girls lying prostrate in their steamer chairs with their eyes closed. You never saw so many green capes and blue hats in your life! We are in the great majority on the boat. The sea was calm and silvery, and it was delicious to have nothing to do but to enjoy it and to let that salt water lethargy creep over you. However, I also felt a cold creeping over me, in spite of "red pills" and fresh air, and Sunday when I woke up I had a feeling in my chest that made me decide the better part of valor was to remain in bed. It was a nuisance, because the weather outside was like a day in June. I looked out of the porthole onto a level blue sea and warm, balmy air blew in. It was unbelievable. The ship's doctor visited me, tapped me and put on a hot compress, and I lay in my upper

Katherine Shortall
A "Y Girl in France

Ky-un-a's old home was some forty miles distant. To it, that he might die there, he desired to go. On the fourth day after the accident, he was placed in a litter, covered with warm furs, and borne over the smooth icefields. I shall never forget that dismal and solemn procession. A benign calm prevailed over land and sea. The orange glow of a luxurious moon set the ice coldly aflame. Long shadows, like spectral mourners, robed in purple, loomed before the tiny procession. Now and then, as they dwindled in the distance, I saw them, like black dots, crossing areas of polished ice which glowed like mirror lakes of silver. From the distance, softly shuddered the decreasing moans of the dying man; then there was silence. I marvelled again upon the lure of this eerily, weirdly beautiful land, where, always imminent, death can be so terrible.

Frederick A. Cook
My Attainment of the Pole

In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl--and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: “Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!” Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.

Richard Aldington
Some Imagist Poets, 1916

The next day, Hosea was very early at the door of the wireless operator's cabin, endeavouring to get a reply from the ship's agents in Monte Video, to questions sent some days before. I do not think he succeeded. There was, however, much buzzing, and I got up to enjoy the time of day. It was still keen outside--"a nipping and an eager air"--the sky being blue and the sun unclouded none the less; over the drab green sea, a seagull or two in their lordly fashions flapping against the wind; to starboard, in a gentle haze, a view of rugged shore. This point was one of mountainous eminences, rolling like larger Downs, with white cliffs or sandy beaches under their light red masses. Other steamers were in our neighbourhood, on the same course out or home, some bright with new paint, others scarred and rusty. Probably they were having tripe in batter for breakfast like ourselves, the prose part of me suggested; and I felt with gratitude that I must have become a new and better man, who could now face and even look forward to a food which had hitherto only interested me as a favourite with C. Lamb.

Edmund Blunden
The Bonadventure

One evening, having excused herself from accompanying her aunt abroad, she thus withdrew to the pavilion, with books and her lute. It was the mild and beautiful evening of a sultry day, and the windows, which fronted the west, opened upon all the glory of a setting sun. Its rays illuminated, with strong splendour, the cliffs of the Pyrenees, and touched their snowy tops with a roseate hue, that remained, long after the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the shades of twilight had stolen over the landscape. Emily touched her lute with that fine melancholy expression, which came from her heart. The pensive hour and the scene, the evening light on the Garonne, that flowed at no great distance, and whose waves, as they passed towards La Vallée, she often viewed with a sigh—these united circumstances disposed her mind to tenderness, and her thoughts were with Valancourt, of whom she had heard nothing since her arrival at Thoulouse, and now that she was removed from him, and in uncertainty, she perceived all the interest he held in her heart. Before she saw Valancourt she had never met a mind and taste so accordant with her own, and, though Madame Cheron told her much of the arts of dissimulation, and that the elegance and propriety of thought, which she so much admired in her lover, were assumed for the purpose of pleasing her, she could scarcely doubt their truth. This possibility, however, faint as it was, was sufficient to harass her mind with anxiety, and she found, that few conditions are more painful

Ann Radcliffe
The Mysteries of Udolpho

England, late birth-place of excellence and school of the wise, thy children are gone, thy glory faded! Thou, England, wert the triumph of man! Small favour was shewn thee by thy Creator, thou Isle of the North; a ragged canvas naturally, painted by man with alien colours; but the hues he gave are faded, never more to be renewed. So we must leave thee, thou marvel of the world; we must bid farewell to thy clouds, and cold, and scarcity for ever! Thy manly hearts are still; thy tale of power and liberty at its close! Bereft of man, O little isle! the ocean waves will buffet thee, and the raven flap his wings over thee; thy soil will be birth-place of weeds, thy sky will canopy barrenness. It was not for the rose of Persia thou wert famous, nor the banana of the east; not for the spicy gales of India, nor the sugar groves of America; not for thy vines nor thy double harvests, nor for thy vernal airs, nor solstitial sun--but for thy children, their unwearied industry and lofty aspiration. They are gone, and thou goest with them the oft trodden path that leads to oblivion, --

Mary Shelley
The Last Man

The 11th at noon, having a very good observation, I found myself to the northward of my reckoning; and thence concluded that we had a current setting north-west, or rather more westerly, as the land lies. From that time to the next morning we had fair clear weather and a fine moderate gale from south-east to east by north: but at daybreak the clouds began to fly, and it lightned very much in the east, south-east and north-east. At sun-rising the sky looked very red in the east near the horizon; and there were many black clouds both to the south and north of it. About a quarter of an hour after the sun was up there was a squall to the windward of us; when on a sudden one of our men on the forecastle called out that he saw something astern, but could not tell what: I looked out for it and immediately saw a spout beginning to work within a quarter of a mile of us, exactly in the wind. We presently put right before it. It came very swiftly, whirling the water up in a pillar about 6 or 7 yards high. As yet I could not see any pendulous cloud from whence it might come; and was in hopes it would soon lose its force. In 4 or 5 minutes time it came within a cable's length of us and passed away to leeward; and then I saw a long pale stream coming down to the whirling water. This stream was about the bigness of a rainbow: the upper end seemed vastly high, not descending from any dark cloud and therefore the most strange to me; I never having seen the like before. It passed about a mile to

William Dampier
A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland

Second, they do not blow upon, or toward, heated surfaces of land or water--_i. e._, toward the dry and parched surfaces, where the dry season prevails, or from adjoining cold waters on to warm surfaces, but toward the land or water _situated under the rainy belt_. They are therefore incident storm winds, (as our easterly winds are incident storm winds) of the rain clouds of the tropics. They blow in upon the land, under the belt of rains, while that belt with its daily cloud, and inducing electric action, is over it, and follow that belt in its transit north and south. They blow from the warm south polar current of the Atlantic, which flows N. W. from the coast of Africa, toward the inshore north polar current, which is there flowing south, but under the belt of rains. In the Indian Ocean they blow from the center of that ocean, and the Arabian Sea, toward the belt which hangs over Hindoostan, from the S. W.; and when the rainy belt travels south they still blow toward, and under it, from the Indian Ocean, but of course from the N. W. The heated character of the waters of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, which receive no polar currents, but heated waters from the Persian Gulf, and from rivers which flow into the Bay of Bengal over the heated plains of a tropical country, explain this. So, too, the monsoon of the Atlantic Ocean, does not blow north of the Cape De Verde Islands,--where the heated surface of Sahara, burning with the rays of a vertical sun, has a temperature sometimes ranging from one

Thomas Belden Butler
The Philosophy of the Weather

go into the next world. Nothing of the kind; your Frankforter hates dying above all things. The hardy peasant who sees the sun rise from his native mountains, and beholds him setting over a glorious landscape of wood and glen, of field and valley, can leave the bright world with fewer regrets than your denizen of some dark alley or some smoke-dried street in a great metropolis. The love of life--it may be axiomised--is in the direct ratio of its artificiality. The more men shut out Nature from their hearts and homes, and surround themselves with the hundred little appliances of a factitious existence, the more do they become attached to the world. The very changes of flood and field suggest the thought of a hereafter to him who dwells among them; the falling leaf, the withered branch, the mouldering decay of vegetation, bear lessons there is no mistaking; and the mind thus familiarised learns to look forward to the great event as the inevitable course of that law by which he lives and breathes--while to others, again, the speculations which grow out of the contemplation of Nature’s great works invariably are blended with this thought. Not so your man of cities, who inhabits some brick-surrounded kingdom, where the incessant din of active life as effectually excludes deep reflection as does the smoky atmosphere the bright sky above it. Immersed in worldly cares, interested heart and soul in the pursuit of wealth, the solemn idea of death is not broken to his mind by any analogy whatever. It is the pomp of the funeral that

Charles James Lever
Arthur O’Leary His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands

Just on the outskirts of our village there slept a silent, secluded little nook, which the thickly-growing trees quite enclosed, only permitting the bright sun to glance glimmeringly through their interwoven leaves and look upon the blue-eyed violets that held their mute confabulations--each and all perking up their pretty heads to receive the diurnal kiss of their god-father Sol--in little lowly knots at their feet. Kind reader, I am sure I cannot make you know how very lovely it was, unless you yourself have peeped into this sheltered spot--seen the cool, dark shadows stretching across the velvet turf, and making the bright patches of sunlight look brighter still--have stood by the murmuring brook on which the sun-bright leaves overhead are mirrored tremulously, and upon whose brink there grows so many a lovely "denizen of the wild"--gazed admiringly upon the beautiful white rose Dame Nature hath set in the heart of this hidden sanctuary, as a seal of purity and innocence--and more than this, have turned from all these to watch the fairy form flitting from flower to flower, with so light a step that one might mistake it for some bright fay sent on a love-mission to this actual world of ours--if one did not know that this was Fanny Layton's dream-dell--that in this lovely spot she would spend hours during the long, warm summer days, poring over the pages of some favorite author, or twining the sweet wild flowers in fragrant wreaths to bedeck her invalid mother's room--or, perchance, staying for awhile those busy fingers, to indulge

Here, in some tremendous convulsion of Nature, the mountain-ridge seems to have been suddenly rent and burst through towards its summit, and we look down over a precipice some five hundred feet deep. It is possible to wind down the face of the rock by a narrow path; but, having no mind to make the descent, we rest and admire the magnificent prospect before and below us. Under the precipice is a forest, so near to the foot of the rock that one might easily pitch a stone into it. Over the forest stretches a lovely country, green and fresh, dotted with hills and woods. The sea, about seven miles off, bounds the view, with its silver line of breakers on the outer reef. The long line of white looks beautiful on the calm blue sea, with the sun shining on it. The country before us did not seem to be much cultivated. Here and there, below us, a native hut might be discerned amidst the trees, but no large dwelling or village was in sight.

The Son of Samuel Smiles
A Boy's Voyage Round the World

A short walk from Pocahontas brings you to a view of one of the most charming waterfalls in this part of the mountains. The erosion of ages has here carved out of the face of the cliff a lofty, semi-circular alcove, and over this background of sombre rock drops a ribbon of sparkling diamonds. An illustration might give some idea of the scene, but could not do justice to the peculiar grace and animation of the fall as seen under a bright sun and swayed gently by a summer's breeze. There are a number of beautiful waterfalls in Jasper Park, such as those on Stony River, a tributary of the Athabaska some distance above Pocahontas, in the Maligne Canyon, of which something will be said later, on the south side of Pyramid Mountain, and on Sulphur Creek above the hot springs, but none that cling to the memory like that of the Punch Bowl.

Lawrence J. Burpee
Among the Canadian Alps

"It did not last long," she said. "We encountered very bad weather, and his nerves again went by the board. That was in the 60th longitude, I think (where whales were still to be found in those years), and seven hundred miles or so to the east of Spitzbergen. On the day--it was in August--that the storm first overtook us, the boats were out in pursuit of a 'right' whale, as, I believe, the men called it--a great bull creature, and piebald like a horse; and I saw the spouting of his breath as if a water main had burst in a London fog. The wind came in a sudden charge from the northwest, and the whale dived with a harpoon in its back; and in the confusion a reel fouled, and one of the boats was whipt under in a moment--half a mile down, perhaps--and its crew drawn with it, and their lungs, full of air, burst like bubbles. We had no time to think of them. We got the other boat-load on board, and then the gale sent us crashing down the slopes of the sea. I have no knowledge of how long we were curst of the tempest and the sport of its ravings. I only know that when it released us at last, we had been hurled a thousand miles eastwards. The long interval was all a hellish jangle in which time seemed obliterated. Sometimes we saw the sun--a furious red globe; and we seemed to stand still while it raced down the sky and ricocheted over the furthermost waves like a red-hot cannon ball. Sometimes in pitch darkness the wild sense of flight and expectation was an ecstasy. But through all

'You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson points.  You'll have the Queen's Bluff--seven hundred feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau Island, which isn't like any other island in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you.  And above Winona you'll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand Islands, too beautiful for anything; green? why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick; it's like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking-glass--when the water 's still; and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides of the river--ragged, rugged, dark-complected--just the frame that's wanted; you always want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice points of a delicate picture and make them stand out.'

Behind the Quathlamba Range the country spreads out to the north and west in a vast tableland, sometimes flat, sometimes undulating, sometimes intersected by ridges of rocky hills. This is the third region. Its average height above the sea varies from 3000 to 5000 feet, and the hills reach in places nearly 6000. Thus the Quathlamba Range may be regarded as being really the edge of the tableland, and when in travelling up from the coast one reaches the water-shed, or "divide" (an American term which South Africans have adopted), one finds that on the farther or northerly side there is very little descent. The peaks which when seen from the slopes towards the coast looked high and steep are on this inner side insignificant, because they rise so little above the general level of the plateau. This plateau runs away inland to the west and north-west, and occupies seven-eighths of the surface of South Africa. It dips gently on the north to the valley of the Zambesi; but on the west spreads out over the Kalahari Desert and the scarcely less arid wastes of Damaraland, maintaining (except along the lower course of the Orange River) an altitude of from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea, until within a comparatively short distance of the Atlantic Ocean.

James Bryce
Impressions of South Africa

Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other, The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark, The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming, The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and content to the ground, The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with, The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one, The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are, The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves, The limpid liquid within the young man, The vex’d corrosion so pensive and so painful, The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest, The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others, The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes, The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master him, The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats, The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers, the young man all color’d, red, ashamed, angry; The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked, The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,

During the 18th the travelers reached the top-most point of the pass, about 2,000 feet high. They found themselves on an open plateau, with nothing to intercept the view. Toward the north the quiet waters of Lake Omco, all alive with aquatic birds, and beyond this lay the vast plains of the Murray. To the south were the wide spreading plains of Gippsland, with its abundant gold-fields and tall forests. There nature was still mistress of the products and water, and great trees where the woodman's ax was as yet unknown, and the squatters, then five in number, could not struggle against her. It seemed as if this chain of the Alps separated two different countries, one of which had retained its primitive wildness. The sun went down, and a few solitary rays piercing the rosy clouds, lighted up the Murray district, leaving Gippsland in deep shadow, as if night had suddenly fallen on the whole region. The contrast was presented very vividly to the spectators placed between these two countries so divided, and some emotion filled the minds of the travelers, as they contemplated the almost unknown district they were about to traverse right to the frontiers of Victoria.

Jules Verne
In Search of the Castaways

With this terrible tragedy still dwelling on my mind, and the features of her who enacted it, I fell asleep. The room in which I lay had witnessed the deed. The low portal in the corner, concealed behind the arras, led to the stairs of the tower; the deep window in the massive wall looked out upon the swelling landscape over which she fled, and he, in mad fury, pursued her: these, were enough to seize and hold the mind, and, blending the actual with the past, to make up a vision of palpable reality. Oftentimes did I start from sleep. Now, it was the fancy of a foot upon the tower stair; now, a child's fairy step upon the terrace overhead; now, I heard, in imagination, the one, wild, fearful cry, uttered as if the reeling senses could endure no more! At last I found it better to rise and sit by the window, so overwrought and excited had my brain become. Day was breaking, not in the cold grey of a northern dawn, but in a rich glow of violet-coloured light, which, warmer on the mountain-tops, gradually merged into a faint pinkish hue upon the lesser hills, and became still fainter in the valleys and over the city itself. A light, gauzy mist, tracked out in the air the course of the Arno; but so frail was this curtain, that the sun's rays were already rending and scattering its fragments, giving through the breaches bright peeps of villas, churches, and villages on the mountain sides: the great dome, too, rose up in solemn grandeur; and the tall tower of Santa Croce stood, sentinel like, over the sleeping city. Already the low sounds of

Charles James Lever
Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq.

_August 27._--I made a more extended circuit in the vale with Brother Michel. We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these rude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which I found myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which I passed. We mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit of one of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark out provinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side. The ground fell away on either hand with an extreme declivity. From either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and the smoke of household fires. Here and there the hills of foliage would divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of these deep-nested habitations. And still, high in front, arose the precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed that scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of a human road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble. And in truth, for all the labour that it cost, the road is regarded even by the Marquesans as impassable; they will not risk a horse on that, ascent; and those who lie to the westward come and go in their canoes. I never knew a hill to lose so little on a near approach: a consequence, I must suppose, of its surprising steepness. When we turned about, I was amazed to behold so deep a view behind, and so high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the whale-like island of Motane. And yet the wall of mountain had not visibly dwindled, and I could even have fancied, as I raised my

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25)

All the long day there was a faint busy hum of insects in the air. It came from the grass, from the trees--the long tasselled branches of downy honey-sweet, white blossoms that hung from them. Yet this ceaseless chirring of insects, the leafy murmuring of the trees, twittering of birds in the brushwood, the murmuring of the wind in distant valleys, the intermittent crooning and drone of the creek--all the faint, sweet, earth voices dropped into the great quiet that brooded over the place as they might have into a mysterious ocean that absorbed and obliterated all sounds. The bright hours were rent by the momentary screeching and chatter of parroquets, as they flew, spreading the red, green and yellow of their breasts against the blue sky. At sunset and dawn there were merry melodious flutings, long, sweet, mating-calls, carollings and bursts of husky, gnomish laughter. Yet the silence remained, hovering and swallowing insatiably every sound.

within his reach was a small note-book in which from time to time he jotted down certain numerals and made rapid calculations, frowning impatiently as though the very act of writing was too slow for the speed of his thought. There was a wonderful silence everywhere,--a silence such as can hardly be comprehended by anyone who has never visited wide-spreading country, over-canopied by large stretches of open sky, and barricaded from the further world by mountain ranges which are like huge walls built by a race of Titans. The dwellers in such regions are few--there is no traffic save the coming and going of occasional pack-mules across the hill tracks--no sign of modern civilisation. Among such deep and solemn solitudes the sight of a living human being is strange and incongruous, yet the man seated outside his hut had an air of ease and satisfied proprietorship not always found with wealthy owners of mansions and park-lands. He was so thoroughly engrossed in his books and papers that he hardly saw, and certainly did not hear, the approach of a woman who came climbing wearily up the edge of the sloping hill against which his cabin presented itself to the view as a sort of fitment, and advanced towards him carrying a tin pail full of milk. This she set down within a yard or so of him, and then, straightening her back, she rested her hands on her hips and drew a long breath. For a minute or two he took no notice of her. She waited. She was a big handsome creature, sun-browned and

Marie Corelli
The Secret Power

beads and a broken mirror found in a girl's grave at Rome, a marble image of a boy habited like Eros, and with the pathetic tradition of a great king's sorrow lingering about it like a purple shadow,--over all these the tired spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when one has found something that the ages never dull and the world cannot harm; and with it comes that desire of Greek things which is often an artistic method of expressing one's desire for perfection; and that longing for the old dead days which is so modern, so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the inverted torch of Hope, which burns the hand it should guide; and for many things a little sadness, and for all things a great love; and lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more the quick and vital pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the frank and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire life's burnt-out ashes and into song the silent lips of pain,--how clearly one seems to see it all, the long colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep heart of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old Italian god in it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and the stars of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer floats from the branches like thin, tremulous

Oscar Wilde
Miscellanies