English woods: much less the crimsons, purples, and yellows of Canada, where the dying foliage rivals, nay, excels, the expiring dolphin in splendour. Unknown the cold sleep of winter; unknown the lovely awakening of vegetation at the first gentle touch of spring. A ceaseless round of ever-active life weaves the fairest scenery of the tropics into one monotonous whole, of which the component parts exhibit in detail untold variety of beauty."
Siberia is, no doubt, as a rule, somewhat severe and inhospitable, but M. Patrin mentions with enthusiasm how one day, descending from the frozen summits of the Altai, he came suddenly on view of the plain of the Obi—the most beautiful spectacle, he says, which he had ever witnessed. Behind him were barren rocks and the snows of winter, in front a great plain—not entirely green, but only green in places, and for the rest covered by three flowers—the purple Siberian Iris, the golden Hemerocallis, and the silvery Narcissus—all gold and purple and white, as far as the eye could reach.
Wallace tells us that he himself has derived the keenest enjoyment from his sense of colour:—
"The heavenly blue of the firmament, the glowing tints of sunset, the exquisite purity of the snowy mountains, and the endless shades of green presented by the verdure-clad surface of the earth, are a never-failing source of pleasure to all who enjoy the inestimable gift of sight. Yet these constitute, as it were, but the frame and background of a marvellous and ever-changing picture. In contrast with these broad and soothing tints, we have presented to us in the vegetable and animal worlds an infinite variety of objects adorned with the most beautiful and most varied hues. Flowers, insects, and birds, are the organisms most generally ornamented in this way; and their symmetry of form, their variety of structure, and the lavish abundance with which they clothe and enliven the earth, cause them to be objects of universal admiration. The relation of this wealth of colour to our mental and moral nature is indisputable. The child and the savage alike admire the gay tints of flowers, birds, and insects; while to the many of us their contemplation brings a solace and enjoyment which is both intellectually and morally beneficial. It can then hardly excite surprise that this relation was long thought to afford a sufficient explanation of the phenomena of colour in nature, and although the fact that—
'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air,'
might seem to throw some doubt on the sufficiency of the explanation, the answer was easy that in the progress of discovery, man would, sooner or later, find out and enjoy every beauty that the hidden recesses of the earth have in store for him."
Professor Colvin speaks with special admiration of Greek scenery:—
"In other climates, it is only in particular states of the weather that the remote ever seems so close, and then with an effect which is sharp and hard as well as clear; here the clearness is soft, nothing cuts or glitters, seen through that magic distance; the air has not only a new transparency so that you can see further into it than elsewhere, but a new quality, like some crystal of an unknown water, so that to see into it is greater glory." Speaking of the ranges and promontories of sterile limestone, the same writer observes that the colours of them are as austere and delicate as the forms. "If here the scar of some old quarry throws a stain, or there the clinging of some thin leafage spreads a bloom, the stain is of precious gold, and the bloom of silver. Between the blue of the sky and the ten-fold blue of the sea, these bare ranges seem, beneath that daylight, to present a whole system of noble colour flung abroad over perfect forms. And wherever, in the general sterility, you find a little moderate verdure, a little moist grass, a cluster of cypresses—or whenever your eye lights upon the one wood of the district, the long olive grove of the Cephissus, you are struck with a sudden sense of richness, and feel as if the splendours of the tropics would be nothing to this."
Though Jefferies was unfortunately never able to travel, few men have loved Nature more devotedly; and he tells us that: "Of all sweet things there is none so sweet as sweet air—one great flower it is, drawn round about, over, and enclosing us, like Aphrodite's arms, as if the dome of the sky were a bell-flower drooping down over us, and the magical essence of it filling all the room of the earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air. Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained upwards on the bank, striving to keep above the rude grasses that push by them; genius has ever had such a struggle. The plain road was
