LAKES. 97 



The atmospheric phenomena of these regions too, 

 o" to the broken surface and that motion of which 



o 



we have spoken, give a character of universal variety 

 and endless change to their scenery. The light of 

 familiarity, which in time deadens the enjoyment of 

 mere level landscape, however fair, comes not here ; 

 because here the landscape is never for any length 

 of time the same. The minutest alteration of the sun's 

 place in the heavens, or the passage of the lightest 

 cloud, produces a change upon the earth, and invests 

 it with a novel charm. This scene is ever changing, 

 like a succession of creations ; and every change is re- 

 peated with the rich distinctness of truth, yet with the 

 softened beauty of a fiction or a dream, in the un- 

 stained mirror of the lake. Whether we gaze upon 

 these jewels of nature, lying like giant gems in their 

 rich green setting of wood and hill, or lashed into 

 foam and tumult by the wing of the tempest from 

 the mountains, whether we view them with their 

 surface turned into plaits of gold by the alchemy 

 of sunset and the touch of the breeze, or with 

 their crystal floors paved with mimic stars and a 

 mimic moon, nature nowhere else presents herself 

 to the eye in forms in which the presence of power is 

 so intimately associated with the presence of beauty 

 the feeling of loneliness with the feeling of life the 

 sense of motion with the suggestions of repose the 

 evidences of unyielding winter with something like the 

 aspect of an ever-budding spring, and the spirit of 

 hoar antiquity with that of continual youth. 



The deep lake never very much alters its tempera- 

 ture, even though situated in a northern region ; more 

 K 



