CHAPTER XII. 



BESIDE THE RIVER. 



ALL day long the river has moved through my 

 thought as it rolls through the landscape spread 

 out at my feet. There it lies, winding for many a 

 mile within the boundaries of this noble outlook ; 

 by day flecked with sails approaching and receding, 

 and at night shining under the full moon like a 

 girdle of silver, clasping mountains and broad 

 meadow lands in a varied but harmonious land 

 scape. From the point at which I look out upon 

 its long course, the stream has a setting worthy of 

 its volume and its history. In the distant back 

 ground a mountain range, of noble altitude and 

 outline, has to-day an ethereal strength and splen 

 dor ; a slight haze has obliterated all details, and 

 left the great hills soft and dreamlike in the Sep 

 tember sunshine ; at first sight one waits to see 

 them vanish, but they remain, wrought upon by sun 

 light and atmosphere, until the twilight touches 

 them with purple and night turns them into mighty 

 shadows. On either hand, in the middle ground of 

 the picture, long lines of hills shut the river within 

 a world of its own, and shelter the green meadows, 

 the fallow fields, and the stretches of woodland 

 66 



