8 DIFFERENT GRADATIONS OP 



character of the landscape, the new and beautiful forms of 

 vegetable life, the grouping of the clouds, and the vague 

 uncertainty with which they mingle with the neighbouring 

 islands, and the distant horizon half visible through the 

 morning mist. All that the senses but partially comprehend, 

 and whatever is most grand and awful in such romantic 

 scenes, open fresh sources of delight. That which sense 

 grasps but imperfectly offers a free field to creative fancy ; 

 the outward impressions change with the changing phases of 

 the mind ; and this without destroying the illusion, by which 

 we imagine ourselves to receive from external nature that 

 with which we have ourselves unconsciously invested her. 



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

 we tread for the first time the lauds of the tropics, we ex- 

 perience an impression of agreeable surprise in recognising, 

 in the cliffs and rocks around, the same forms and sub- 

 stances, similar inclined strata of schistose rocks, the same 

 columnar basalts, which we had left in Europe : this identity, 

 in latitudes so different, reminds us that the solidification of 

 the crust of the earth has been independent of differences of 

 climate. But these schists and these basalts are covered 

 with vegetable forms of new and strange aspect. Amid the 

 luxuriance of this exotic flora, surrounded by colossal forms 

 of unfamiliar grandeur and beauty, we experience (thanks to 

 the marvellous flexibility of our nature) how easily the mind 

 opens to the combination of impressions connected with 

 each other by unperceived links of secret analogy. The 

 imagination recognises in these strange forms nobler deve- 

 opments of those which surrounded our childhood; the 

 colonist loves to give to the plants of his new home names 

 borrowed from his native land, and these strong untaught 



