212 VIRGINIA 



landscape. It was so, I remember, at Au- 

 sable Chasm ; interesting, grand, impressive, 

 but a place in which I had no passion for 

 staying, no sense of exquisite delight or 

 solemnity. In Burlington, just across Lake 

 Champlain, I could sit by the hour, even on 

 the flat roof of the hotel, and gaze upon the 

 blue water and the blue Adirondacks be- 

 yond, — the sight was a feast of beauty ; 

 but this cleft in the rocks, — well, I was 

 glad to walk through it and to shoot the 

 rapids ; there was nothing to be said in 

 disparagement of the place, but it put me 

 under no speU. I fear it would be the same 

 with those marvelous Colorado canons and 

 "gardens of the gods." A wooded moun- 

 tain side, a green valley, running water, a 

 lake with islands, best of all, perhaps (for 

 me, that is, and taking the years together), 

 a New England hill pasture, with boulders 

 and red cedars, berry bushes and fern 

 patches, the whole bounded by stone walls 

 and bordered with gray birches and pitch 

 pines, — for sights to live with, let me have 

 these and things like them in preference to 

 any of nature's more freakish work, which 

 appeals rather to curiosity than to the ima- 

 gination and the affections. 



