26 COSMOS. 



various sensations that derive their charm and peimauencf 

 from the pecuhar character of the scene. 



If I might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections 

 »f my own distant travels, I would instance, among the most 

 •■■triking scenes of nature, the calm sublimity of a tropical night, 

 ivhen the stars, not sparkling, as in our northern skies, shed 

 cheir soft and planetary light over the gently-heaving ocean ; 

 )r I would recall the deep valleys of the Cordilleras, where 

 ",he tall and slender palms pierce the leafy vail around them, 

 ind waving on high their feathery and arrow-like branches, 

 ';brm, as it were, " a forest above a forest ;"* or I would de- 

 scribe the summit of the Peak of TenerifTe, when a horizontal 

 .ayer of clouds, dazzling in whiteness, has separated the cone 

 )f cinders from the plain below, and suddenly the ascending 

 iurrent pierces the cloudy vail, so that the eye of the traveler 

 may range from the brink of the crater, along the vine-clad 

 slopes of Orotava, to the orange gardens and banana groves 

 that skirt the shore. In scenes like these, it is not the peace- 

 ful charm uniformly spread over the face of nature that moves 

 the heart, but rather the peculiar physiognomy and conforma- 

 tion of the land, the features of the landscape, the ever-vary- 

 ing outline of the clouds, and their blending with the horizon 

 of the sea, whether it lies spread before us like a smooth and 

 shining mirror, or is dimly seen through the morning mist. 

 All that the senses can but imperfectly comprehend, all that 

 is most awful in such romantic scenes of nature, may become 

 1 source of enjoyment to man, by opening a wide field to the 

 creative powers of his imagination. Impressions change with 

 the varying movements of the mind, and we are led by a hap- 

 py illusion to believe that we receive from the external world 

 that with which we have ourselves invested it. 



When far from our native country, after a long voyage, we 

 ;read for the first time the soil of a tropical land, v/e expe- 

 •ience a certain feeling of surprise and gratification in recog- 

 lizing, in the rocks that surround us, the same inclined schis- 

 I ose strata, and the same columnar basalt covered with cellu- 

 iar amygdaloids, that we had left in Europe, and whose iden- 

 iity of character, in. latitudes so widely different, reminds us 

 !.hat the solidification of the earth's crust is altogether inde- 

 [leudent of climatic influences. But these rocky masses of 

 schist and of basalt are covered with vogetation of a character 

 with wluch we are unacquainted, and of a physiognomy wholly 



* This expression is taken from a beautiful description of tropical 

 forest sceiieiy iu Paul and Virginia, by Bernardin de Saint Pierre. 



