h grass, where "God had showered the landscape;" to a fantastic
fancy, giving the idea of the quivering of the richest leaf gold on a
ground of emerald. The humbler Welsh Parnassus of the painter poet,
Grongar Hill, towered also in distance. We traced the pastoral yet noble
river, winding away in long meanders, up-flashing silver, through a
broad mountain valley, dotted with white farms, rich in various foliage,
marked as a map by lines, with well-marked hedge-rows; harvest fields
full of sheaves, yellowing all the lofty slopes that presented these
beautiful farms and folds full to the descending sun; those slopes,
surmounted by grand masses of darkness, solemnly contrasted with the gay
luxuriance all below; that darkness only the shade of woods, nodding
like the black plume over the golden armour of some giant hero of fable,
"magna componere parvis."

Nearer, rose directly from the river a noble park, with all the charm of
the wild picturesque, from its antique look, its romantic undulations
and steepness, its woody mount and ivied ruin of a castle, "bosomed high
in tufted trees," half-hidden, yet visible and reflected in the
now-placid mirror of a reach of the river.

Being Sunday, a moral charm was added to those of this exquisite natural
panorama, from which the curtain of storm-cloud seemed just then drawn
up, as if to strike us the more with its flashing glory of sunshine,
water, and a whole sky become cerulean in a few minutes. No Sabbath
bells chimed, indeed; but the hushed town, and vacant groups come abroad
to enjoy the return of that Italian weather we had long luxuriated in,
impressed, equally with any music, the idea of Sabbath on the mind. It
was hard to believe, revolting to be forced to believe, that this fine
scene of perfect beauty and deep repose, as presented to the eye,
directed to nature only--to the mind's eye rolling up to nature's
God--was also the (newly transfigured) theatre of man's worst and
darkest passions; that the _army_--that odious, hideous, necessary curse
of civilization, the severe and hateful guardian of liberty and peace,
(though uncongenial to both)--was at that moment evoked by all the
lovers of both for their salvation; was even then violating the ideal
harmony of the hour, by its foul yet saving presence; was parading those
green suburbs, and the sweet fields under those mountain walls, with
those clangours so discordant to the holy influences of the hour and
scene--emerging