A VISIT TO MOUNT AGASSIZ 243 



yield myself to the great painter's enchant- 

 ments. 



My eye wanders over the landscape, but 

 not uneasily ; nay, it can hardly be said to 

 wander at all ; it rests here and there, not 

 trying to see, but seeing. Now it is upon 

 the road, spaces of which show at intervals, 

 while I imagine the rest — a sentimental 

 journey ; now upon a far-off grassy clearing 

 among woods (Mears's or Chase's), homely 

 enough, and lonely enough — and familiar 

 enough — to fit the mood of the hour ; now 

 upon the distant level reaches of the Landaff 

 Valley. But the beauty of the scene is not 

 so much in this or that as in all together. 

 I say now, as I said twenty years ago, 

 " This is the kind of prospect for me: " a 

 broken valley, fields and woods intermin- 

 gled, with mountains circumscribing it all ; 

 a splendid panorama seen from above, but 

 not fi-om too far above ; from a hiU, that is 

 to say, rather than from a mountain. 



An hour of this luxury and I return to 

 the tower, where the musician and the 

 keeper are still in conference. The keeper, 

 especially, is a man much after my own 



