WATER SCENERY. 



There is no single thing in nature that adds more 

 beauty to landscape than water. It is emblematical of 

 purity and tranquillity; it is suggestive of multitudes 

 of pleasant rural images, and, beside these moral ex- 

 pressions, it possesses a great deal of intrinsic beauty. 

 The mirrored surface of a lake or a stream, reflecting the 

 hues and forms of the clouds in the heavens, and of the 

 trees and shrubbery on its banks, is pleasing to the eye, 

 independently of any suggestion that may occur to a fan- 

 ciful mind. The eye requires to be practised, or rather 

 the mind must be educated in a certain manner, before it 

 can enjoy and appreciate moral beauty. But the beauty 

 of a smooth surface of water, of waves trembling in the 

 moonlight, of a spouting fountain, or a sparkling rill, is 

 obvious and attractive even to a child. In water have 

 color and form and motion intimately combined their 

 charms, assuming the loveliest tints in the dews of heaven 

 and the spray of the ocean, and every imaginable form 

 of beauty in the lake and its sinuosities, and the river in 

 its various windings through vale and mountain. 



Water is not only beautiful in itself, but it is one of 

 the chief sources of pleasing variety in the expression 

 of landscape, whether we view it as spread out on the 

 silver bosom of a lake, the serpentine course of a river, 

 or by its outlines forming those endless changes that 

 delight the voyager by the sea-shore. Every one must 

 have observed, when riding through an unattractive 

 country, how it seems overspread with a sudden charm 



