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192 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE ____ onap. 
barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and 
softening in their fall the sound of loving 
voices. 
“Go out, in the spring time, among the 
meadows that slope from the shores of the 
Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower moun- 
tains. There, mingled with the taller gentians 
and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep 
and free, and as you follow the winding 
mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all 
veiled and dim with blossom, — paths, that for 
ever droop and rise over the green banks and 
mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, 
steep to the blue water, studded here and 
there with new mown heaps, filling all the 
air with fainter sweetness, — look up towards 
the higher hills, where the waves of everlast- 
ing green roll silently into their long inlets 
among the shadows of the pines ; and we may, 
perhaps, at last know the meaning of those 
quiet words of the 147th Psalm, ‘ He maketh 
the grass to grow upon the mountains.’ ” 
“On fine days,’ he tells us again in his 
Autobiography, “ when the grass was dry, I 
