of the Mediterranean is noticed by all travellers, and Suzanne gathered a gorgeous bouquet as specimens for absent friends.

Occasionally they stopped to watch the forms and elegant movements of the fiery horses of dazzling white, or the rushing plunge of jet black cattle that, half wild, half tame, stared fiercely at the intruders, and then, vanishing from before them, fled with thundering gallop into the marshes. The aspect of this coast is peculiar to an European eye; there are large pools of water, shapeless masses of land, broken dikes, high piles, and fishing tackle in quantities; and ever in the distance the ancient walls of Aiguesmortes, sunburnt, and stretching wide like a curtain, before the blue horizon of the Cevennes.

27

CHAPTER II.

NISMES.

THE character of a landscape is not derived altogether from lines, colours, and perspective. The remembrances connected with it; the races that people it; the sounds peculiar to it, either sad or joyful; the air breathed in it, that braces the traveller with fresh energy, or enervates him with luxurious perfume;-all these, and many other adjuncts, so vary the impressions a landscape can convey to the mind, that we may say scenery derives its influence over the imagination from moral, as well as from physical causes.

The state of the atmosphere, and the laws of light, play an important part in these natural causes, and greatly modify a landscape to an erudite eye. Thus, all attentive travellers remark that the landscape in the South is essentially distinct; this it owes to the greater purity of the air, and to the intensity of the direct light. The eye takes in at once all the details of the picture; the more distant points are as precise as those

nearer; the sky assumes the deep and stedfast blue of a perfect sapphire, from east to west over the vault, and the trees and buildings stand out so eagerly to notice, we may fancy them moveable property.

The landscape in the north, on the contrary, is more romantic; the continuous rains, and the heavier mists rising up from the earth, often effect the sacrifice of one corner of the picture, to bring out the rest, and so graduate the altitudes, from the feet of the observer up to the shadowy horizon, that the points of attraction seem multiplied indefinitely, whilst a vague feeling of space and mystery finds its way to the heart.

It was during a drive to the Roman aqueduct, now known by the title of the Pont du Gard, that these observations on scenery were made by Felix, his audience being Suzanne, his wife, with the boy Reuben, and Haddo, now his guest from England. Felix went on to commend the scenery of his own country, as combining excellencies.

"Nature," he said, "is peaceful, though sleepy, in Holland; rich, in Belgium; verdant, trim, and lively, in England; poetic and melancholy, in Scotland; but in the South of France there is a blending of beauties. Gascony presents a stream that reflects the rays of the setting sun throughout its length, and that fattens a soil, redundant

in fruit, and animated by populous villages, thickly planted along its windings. I ever loved the Garonne from a child; it is the most joyous river to look upon that waters the earth.

"The bright Garonne ! that on 'midst flowers and
laughter,

With sunshine, like a banner streaming after,
Kisses the Atlantic past Bordeaux's fair walls,
No lovelier stream than which to ocean falls."

Here Felix, sinking back into prose, went on"In the Albigeois district there are sterile plateaux, it is true, but these are interspersed with valleys where Nature, showering down treasures, forms sites so delicious, the heart is fain to crave to live in them for ever.

"In Ardèche the views become sharp and fantastic; the soil is heaved up by volcanic fires; forests tenant the basins of craters, and fountains spring out of basaltic colonnades.

"In Provence the scenery assumes an entirely Southern garb; there is the sky of 'molten brass ;' there are rocks, grey in the shade, golden in the sunshine; plains covered with the stunted olive, and vales with the fertility of Canaan.

"But, give me above them all," he said, "the landscape of the Pyrenees! Here we see frowning crags and lofty terraces, where we breathe the balmy breath of the South, beneath the magic of a clouded sky. This is, indeed, a privileged

region. Here the poet stands wrapt in mute enthusiasm, whilst the painter throws away his pencil, and despairs of his art."

Suzanne now eulogised rural scenery in England, as combining much to awaken religious feeling.

"What I most admire in it is," she said, "the village church, standing rather apart though at no great distance from the cottages of the labourers, half hidden by the foliage of a clump of elms, that 'undissenting tree,' as the author of the Christian Ballads calls it, or venerable oaks, and draped in its rich mantle of ivy; its architecture, if not always admirable for its regularity, is yet imposing, and often noble and harmonious. Its little belfry lifts itself up with seignorial importance, and its great east window, with its fragments of gorgeous blazonry, is there, to attest the piety of our ancestors, who endowed with gifts the house of GOD before they roofed their own with cedar. A country churchyard in England is a healing sight, so different to the cemeteries in our warner climes. It seems like home to a sorrowful heart! As we traverse it to go to the house of prayer it cannot fail to awaken pious thoughts in all who are accessible to gentle influences, and to soften the feelings of those who beneath its green hillocks have deposited friends. with whom their earthly hopes lie buried, but