102 April — Hills in April Weather. 



in the suddenness of its unexpected yet most effective 

 contrasts, would of itself be a subject of inexhaustible 

 interest in any country where the landscape is not too 

 irremediably dull for any thing to make it lively ; but 

 this is not all. In genuine April weather you have not 

 only the play of light and shadow, but that of mystery 

 and definition, caused by the frequent showers, which 

 pass before the hills at one time with the half-trans- 

 parence of a veil, at another with the opacity of a curtain ; 

 so that it is hardly possible to find any considerable 

 extent of hill-scenery of which one part will not be in ' 

 the clearest definition that brilliant sunshine and a pure 

 atmosphere can give to it, whilst another will be in 

 purple shadow, and a third paled by a light-gray shower. 

 It is a season, too, which will give to ordinary hill-sce- 

 nery much of the life and glory of the true mountains. 

 A forest-covered colline, which in summer is simply a 

 rising land of rather sombre green, with a monotonous 

 outline on a blue sky, becomes, under the lively effects 

 of April, as rich in purple and blue, and silvery grays of 

 distance, as a mountain-range in the north of Scotland. 

 Nothing can exceed the vivacity and brilliance of these 

 effects in April, and their brilliance is heightened to the 

 utmost by the freshness of the unsullied greens in the 

 foreground, which are made splendid by the glittering 

 varnish of the rain. This is the time of the willow's 

 pride and glory. He is as yet almost alone amongst 

 the trees, and begins the concert of the year with a 

 delicate and tender solo, to which we are all sure to 

 listen ; and he is sustained by an accompaniment of 



