14 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
lean canopy above, contrasted with the varying fea- 
tures of the busy scenes below — the clear sharp line 
of the horizon, encircling the ocean, as it were, with 
an azure girdle, except when casually broken by a 
light streak of fleecy vapour, which, by interrupting 
the uniformity, enhances the beauty — the boundless 
expanse above and below, terminable to the eye, but 
interminable to the mind — the glowing sun pouring 
from his prolific stores life and fecundity over a world 
fixed in the void of infinitude, and upheld there by an 
Omnipotent hand without any visible or known sup- 
port — all this, and a thousand other objects of local 
sublimity, can only be partially conceived by such 
as have never visited those celebrated regions — • 
“ Where all save the spirit of man is divine.’* 
The picturesque beauties peculiar to an Oriental 
climate may indeed be approached, but not reached 
by the imaginations of such as have witnessed an 
Italian sky under its most favourable aspect ; though 
its quiet summer beauty falls far, very far, short of 
those common only to that land of the sun — 
“ Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine.” 
Here nature, prolific to luxuriance, absolutely revels 
in her fecundity and her magnificence. 
During the monsoon I had the good fortune to obtain 
an introduction to Mr. W. Daniell and his uncle, who 
had been both already some time in India, and with 
whom I agreed to travel as soon as the weather should 
permit. Shortly after the 15th of December the busy 
scene of the roadstead was renewed with fresh activity. 
