y this, from constant
observation. Within this week we have been studying a stream, which
has alternated in its clearness and muddiness. We found the
reflection not only less clear in the latter case, but instead of
brown and dark, to have lost its brownness, and to have become
lighter. To understand the "curves" of water being beyond the reach of
most who are not graduates of Oxford; and painters and admirers of old
masters being people without sense, at least in comparison with the
graduate, he thus disposes of his learned difficulty:--"This is a
point, however, on which it is impossible to argue without going into
high mathematics, and even then the nature of particular curves, as
given by the brush, would be scarcely demonstrable; and I am the less
disposed to take much trouble about it, because I think that the
persons who are really fond of these works are almost beyond the reach
of argument." The celebrated Mrs Partington once endeavoured, at
Sidmouth, to dispose of these "curves," and failed; and we suspect a
stronger reason than the incapacity of his readers for our author's
thus disposing of the subject. We believe the world would not give a
pin's head for all the seas that ever might be painted upon these
mathematical curves; and that, in painting, even a graduate's "high
mathematics" are but a very low affair. But let us enliven the reader
with something really high--and here is, in very high-flown prose,
part of a description of a waterfall; and it will tell him a secret,
that in the midst of these fine falls, nature keeps a furnace and
steam-engine continually at work, and having the fire at hand, sends
up rockets--if you doubt--read:--"And how all the hollows of that foam
burn with green fire, like so much _shattering chrysoprase_; 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, filling the air with light; and how, through
the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue
of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky
through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in
tremulous stillness over all, fading and flashing alternately through
the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among
the thick golden leaves, which toss to and fro in sympathy with the
wild water, their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheav