Gilpin, William S.: Practical hints upon landscape gardening: with some remarks on domestic architecture, as connected with scenery (London: Cadell [u.a.], 1835)

MISCELLANEOUS.

1

As, however, all places have not the ad-
vantage of blue* distance, we must seek
for other causes to enliven such scenes. A
hamlet or village partially seen through the
accompanying trees, presenting a variety of
form and colour to the eye, and suggesting
many a pleasing reflection to the mind, will
imperceptibly spread a cheerful hue on all
around. Even the curling smoke rising from
the lonely cottage, and slowly floating across
the darkening wood below it, marking’ the
preparation for the labourer’s evening meal,
cannot but awake a kindly social feeling,
and impart a conscious cheerfulness to the
mind of the beholder.
I lately met with a most striking instance
of excluding such rural circumstances. A
mansion of the manorial character, com-
manding a rocky gorge, fringed with wood,
through which a river forces its agitated
course, presents to the library window a truly
romantic scene, of which a group of trees, on
a precipitous bank, about fifty feet from the
house, forms the foreground.
At the mouth of the gorge stands a pic-
o o 1
* This term is used to signify that distance which melts
into the horizon.