"The upper Swiss valleys," as the same great Seer says, "are sweet with
perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest places
to come down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of
crystal this way and that, as the winds take them, with all the grace, but
with none of the formalism, of fountains ... until at last ... they find
their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with
quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass blades, and looking
only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled
gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the
day was too short for them to get down the hill."

How vividly does Symonds bring before us the sunny shores of the
Mediterranean, which he loves so well, and the contrast between the
scenery of the North and the South.

"In northern landscapes the eye travels through vistas of leafy boughs to
still, secluded crofts and pastures, where slow-moving oxen graze. The
mystery of dreams and the repose of meditation haunt our massive bowers.
But in the South, the lattice-work of olive boughs and foliage scarcely
veils the laughing sea and bright blue sky, while the hues of the
landscape find their climax in the dazzling radiance of the sun upon the
waves, and the pure light of the horizon. There is no concealment and no
melancholy here. Nature seems to hold a never-ending festival and dance,
in which the waves and sunbeams and shadows join. Again, in northern
scenery, the rounded forms of full-foliaged trees suit the undulating
country, with its gentle hills and brooding clouds; but in the South the
spiky leaves and sharp branches of the olive carry out the defined
outlines which are everywhere observable through the broader beauties of
mountain and valley and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize
this southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and women lived