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The change of theatrical sceneries could hardly have produced a more sudden and striking contrast than this presented to the wild, cold, dark waste through which I had been travelling for a day. It was Strathspey; and I doubt if there is another view in Scotland, of the same dimensions, to equal it.

Aesthetic guidebooks are written for the nature-enamoured, descriptive of these views which the Japanese translator quaintly calls "Sceneries," and which visitors come not only from near but from far to gaze upon.

He devoured their details, his heart searching in them for the mystery of Rachel and finding only a deeper emptiness insistently naked bodies of nymphs lying like newly bathed housemaids amid stiff park sceneries. Miracles of photographic lechery. Would people about him look like that naked? Thank God they were dressed! An ankle in silk was better than a thigh in sunlight.

I shall be there waiting for you to explain some of the most beautiful sceneries that you have ever looked upon in your life. And he was correct, without any exaggeration, for when I leaped from my bed and dressed myself as fast as I could I went to meet my friend and brother, Dr. Lucretius.

The soft mosaic work of the gently rounded hills, or figures wrought in wheat, barley, oats, beans, turnips, and meadow and pasture land, and grouped into landscapes in endless alternation of lights and shades, and all this happy little world now veiled by the low, summer clouds, now flooded by a sunburst between them all these lovely and changing sceneries made my walk like one through a continuous gallery of paintings.

I'd pointed out the range of the Chiracahuas, and Cochise's Stronghold, and the peaks of the Galiuros and other natural sceneries; I had showed him mesquite and yucca, and mescal and soapweed, and sage, and sacatone and niggerheads and all the other known vegetables of the region.

"Vaisampayana said, 'O lord of the earth, Vasudeva and Dhananjaya were highly pleased when the Pandavas had succeeded in regaining and pacifying their dominions, and they deported themselves with great satisfaction, like unto Indra and his consort in the celestial regions, and amidst picturesque woodland sceneries, and tablelands of mountains, and sacred places of pilgrimage, and lakes and rivers, they travelled with great pleasure like the two Aswins in the Nandana garden of Indra.

In calm, sunny weather, the broad beauty of the river and its low gold and emerald shores, with bulky vessels swinging up on the slow full tide, combined the sceneries of America and the Netherlands; but when a gale blew over the low shores, scattering the reed-birds like the golden pollen of the marsh lilies, and cold white gulls succeeded, diving and careening like sharks of the sky, the ships and coasters felt no serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island.

At Naples next, for three weeks, was due admiration of the sceneries and antiquities, Bay and Mountain, by no means forgetting Art and the Museum: "to Pozzuoli, to Baiae, round the Promontory of Sorrento;" above all, "twice to Pompeii," where the elegance and classic simplicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much; and again to Paestum, where "the Temple of Neptune is far the noblest building I have ever seen; and makes both Greek and Revived Roman seem quite barbaric.... Lord Ponsonby lodges in the same house with me; but, of course, I do not countenance an adherent of a beaten Party!"

Through all the ages long, she has worked upon its development; educating its tastes; taming its appetites; refining its sensibilities; multiplying and softening its enjoyments; giving to every sense a new capacity and relish of delight; cultivating the ear for music, and ravishing it with the concord of sweet sounds; cultivating the eye to drink in the glorious beauty of the external world, then adding to natural sceneries ten thousand pictures of mountain, valley, river, man, angel, and scenes in human and heaven's history, painted by the thought-instructed hand; cultivating the palate to the most exquisite sensibilities, and exploring all the zones for luxuries to gratify them; cultivating the fine finger-nerves to such perception that they can feel the pulse of sleeping notes of music; cultivating the still finer organism that catches the subtle odors on the wing, and sends their separate or mingled breathings through every vein and muscle from head to foot.