ugh many glades intervene, close beside that
pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green PINE Clan,
whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the
English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest
that BELLE ISLE is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all
over--bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some
tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns,
on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and
gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of
nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance
purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on
the mountain-top! Trees are they--fruit-trees--The WILD CHERRY, that
grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood--and can
that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old
in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into
pink--yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity
of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin
lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad
fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms
open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles
that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.

"As when to those who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."

Shut your eyes--suppose five months gone--and lo! BELLE ISLE in Autumn,
like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost
in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as
midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin
Redbreast--God bless him!--is warbling on the copestone of that old barn
gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the
clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its
slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the
Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness,
yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and ho