INTRODUCTION. 21 
aspects. He enters into her guarded retreats— 
retiring spots of luxuriant, refreshing, and enticing 
beauty, that are hidden from every other eye; 
where the great world of strife and toil speaks not, 
and its cares and sorrows are forgotten, and Nature 
wakes up the dead divinity within, and rouses the 
soul to purer and nobler purposes. The peculiar 
haunts of the objects of his search are found on 
the sides and summits of lofty mountains, amid 
the dark lonely recesses of forests, in the bright 
bosom of rivers and lakes and waterfalls, on far- 
off unvisited moors, where heaven’s serene and 
passionless blue is the only thing of beauty, and 
in the mossy retreats of dell and dingle, where 
Titania and her fays might sport away the dreamy 
noontide hours. There he finds the pictures which 
the soul treasures most lovingly ; and in these 
byways does he gain the truest insight into the 
mysteries of life. In thus penetrating into the 
very heart of Nature, with much toil and exertion 
it may be, he seems to win her confidence, and to 
earn the right to look into her arena. By minute 
contact and continued commune with her alone 
in the wilderness; he feels in all its fulness and 
depth the beautiful relationship that exists between 
-the outer and the inner life of creation. To others 
the landscape may be but the mere background of a 
picture, in the foreground of which human figures 
