192 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE chap. 



barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and 

 softening in their fall the sound of loving 

 voices. 



" Go out, in the spring time, among the 

 meadows that slope from the shores of the 

 Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower moun- 

 tains. There, mingled with the taller gentians 

 and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep 

 and free, and as you follow the winding 

 mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all 

 veiled and dim with blossom, — paths, that for 

 ever droop and rise over the green banks and 

 mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, 

 steep to the blue water, studded here and 

 there with new mown heaps, filling all the 

 air with fainter sweetness, — look up towards 

 the higher hills, where the waves of everlast- 

 ing green roll silently into their long inlets 

 among the shadows of the pines ; and we may, 

 perhaps, at last know the meaning of those 

 quiet words of the 147th Psalm, ' He maketh 

 the grass to grow upon the mountains.'" 



"On fine days," he tells us again in his 

 Autobiography, '' when the grass was dry, I 



