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of birds; with tliy corridors of sundered stone, and glacier valleys silvered with moonlit lakes, and cool refreshing basins filled with transparent blue; with thy boisterous alpine streams, and quiet lowland rivers, and sluofofish waters wandering- throuo-h char- rcterless sloughs; with thy scraggy scattering oaks, and tangled undergrowth, mirrored in crystalline pools, and flowering shrubs, and mighty sable forests; with thy sunlight soft and hazy, and air sea-scented and sparkling yet mellow, stimulating yet restful, and pure and sweet as that which blows from Araby the Blest, yet strong withal, wooing the sick and care-laden, cooling the vein-swollen brow, thrilling the blood with ocean's stimulants and giving new life, not stifling it; with thy native men and beasts, and birds and fishes, and fields of native grain, all hitherto unmarred by man, all fresh as from the hand of the creator revel- ling in primeval joy and fragrance, while the valley murmurs its contentment, and the forest cypress nods its sable plume; crimson purple and violet in thy blushing beauty veiled in misty gauze that rises fresh and glistening from the sun-beaten ocean, and fills the heavens thick with spray or whirls off* in eddying clouds round the mountain tops, breaking from mina- ret and spire into long streamlets edged by burnished sunlight ; voluptuous thus, or fierce in thy wild unrest, in th}' lashed energies fiery as Achilles, whatever be thy mood or circumstance, thou art a song of nature ringing an ever changing melody, thou art the smile that lit Jehovah's face when he saw that it was good !
