30 ROCKS. 



we feel no sense of constraint. The ■whole boundless 

 prospect is ours. An appearance that cherishes this feel- 

 ing of liberty is essential to the beauty of landscape ; for 

 no man can thoroughly enjoy a scene from which he is 

 excluded. Fences are deformities of prospect which we 

 are obliged to use and tolerate. But the loose stone-wall 

 only is expressive of that freedom which is grateful to 

 the traveller and the rambler. 



It may be remarked that no inconsiderable share of the 

 interest added to a prospect by the presence of rocks 

 arises from their connection with the past ages of the 

 world. They are indeed the monuments of the antedilu- 

 vian period; and no man who is acquainted with the 

 most commonly received geological facts, when wandering 

 among these relics of the mysterious past, can fail to be 

 inspired with those emotions of sublimity that proceed 

 less from, the creations of poetry than from the wonders 

 of science. 



