mild afternoon in May--to mollify and sweeten the severe and sterile
aspect of the scene. Sun and sky do their work of beauty upon earth,
without heeding the ungracious return which she may make; and a rich
warm sunset flung over the hills and woods a delicious atmosphere of
beauty, burnishing the dull heights and the gloomy pines with golden
hues, far more bright, if for less highly valued by men, than the
metallic treasures which lay beneath their masses. Invested by the
lavish bounties of the sun, so soft, yet bright, so mild, yet beautiful,
the waste put on an appearance of sweetness, if it did not rise into the
picturesque. The very uninviting and unlovely character of the
landscape, rendered the sudden effect of the sunset doubly effective,
though, in a colder moment, the spectator might rebuke his own
admiration with question of that lavish and indiscriminate waste which
could clothe, with such glorious hues, a region so little worthy of such
bounty; even as we revolt at sight of rich jewels about the brows and
neck of age and ugliness. The solitary group of pines, that, here and
there, shot up suddenly like illuminated spires;--the harsh and
repulsive hills, that caught, in differing gradations, a glow and glory
from the same bright fountain of light and beauty;--even the low copse,
uniform of height, and of dull hues, not yet quite caparisoned for
spring, yet sprinkled with gleaming eyes, and limned in pencilling beams
and streaks of fire; these, all, appeared suddenly to be subdued in
mood, and appealed, with a freshening interest, to the eye of the
traveller whom at midday their aspects discouraged only.

And there is a traveller--a single horseman--who emerges suddenly from
the thicket, and presses forward, not rapidly, nor yet with the manner
of one disposed to linger, yet whose eyes take in gratefully the
softening influences of that evening sunlight.