A PLEASANT LAND adapt themselves to such easy and gradual transition from spot to spot than to the harsher insistence of a straight line. Nature herself hardly ever indulges in the latter; man may make it, but she, in time, on every opportunity, mars it gloriously.
On either hand, as we drove on, stretched a level land of tilled fields and verdant meadows, the many colours of the crops and the varied greens of the pastures forming a gigantic mosaic. To the right of us rose some rounded fir-crowned hills, if hills be the right term, for only perhaps in a flat country would such modest elevations be dignified with the title of hills. These, to employ a familiar painter's expression, "told" deeply blue—with all the beauty of ultramarine and all the depth of indigo.
It was an open breezy prospect, delightful to gaze upon, though there was nothing exciting or grand about it save the great distances and the wide over-arching sky; but it had the charm of wonderful colouring, and was full of lightness and brightness that was most inspiriting; full of cheery movement too, where the wild wind made rhythmic waves of the long grasses and unreaped fields of corn, and rustled the leaves and bent the topmost branches of the saplings before its gentle blasts, or where it rippled the gliding waters of the winding river and silvery streams, causing them to glance and sparkle in the flooding sunshine. All Nature seemed buoyant with an exuberant vitality upon that almost perfect afternoon, and the gladness of the hour entered into our very souls and made us exultant accordingly! It was a day to call fondly back to
