FAVOUR OF NATURE. 155 



or the impertinent critical stare of the old tourist, is almost 

 never satisfied, if the honest truth be admitted, in what it 

 has been led to previously imagine. I have heard &quot; Niagara is 

 a mill-dam,&quot; &quot; Rome is a humbug.&quot; 



The deep sentiments of Nature that we sometimes seem to 

 have been made the confidant of, when among the mountains, 

 or on the moors or the ocean, even those of man wrought out 

 in architecture and sculpture and painting, or of man work 

 ing in unison with Nature, as sometimes in the English parks, 

 on the Rhine, and here on the Isle of Wight, such revealings 

 are beyond words ; they never could be transcribed into 

 note-books and diaries, and so descriptions of them be 

 come caricatures, and when we see them, we at first say we 

 are disappointed that we find not the monsters we were 

 told of. 



Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide s fee will obtain 

 you her favour, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear 

 questioning, or direct, curious gazing at her beauty ; least of 

 all, will she reveal it truly to the hurried glance of the passing 

 traveller, while he waits for his dinner, or fresh horses, or fuel 

 and water ; always we must quietly and unimpatiently waifc 

 upon it. Gradually and silently the charm comes over us ; the 

 beauty has entered our souls ; we know not exactly when or 

 how, but going away we remember it with a tender, subdued, 

 filial-like joy. 



Does this seem nonsense to you 1 Very likely, for I am 

 talking of what I don t understand. Nature treats me so 

 strangely ; it s past my speaking sensibly of, and yet, as a part 

 of my travelling experience, I would speak of it. At times I 

 seem myself to be her favourite, and she brings me to my 

 knees in deep feeling, such as she blesses no other with ; oftener 

 I see others in ecstasies, while I am left to sentimentalize and 

 mourn, or to be critical, and sneering, and infidel. Nonsense 



