You may drive, I
hear, through the grand one at Chatsworth for a quarter of a mile.
You may ride through mine for fifteen miles on end. I prefer, too,
to any glass roof which Sir Joseph Paxton ever planned, that dome
above my head some three miles high, of soft dappled grey and yellow
cloud, through the vast lattice-work whereof the blue sky peeps, and
sheds down tender gleams on yellow bogs, and softly rounded heather
knolls, and pale chalk ranges gleaming far away. But, above all, I
glory in my evergreens. What winter-garden can compare for them with
mine? True, I have but four kinds--Scotch fir, holly, furze, and the
heath; and by way of relief to them, only brows of brown fern, sheets
of yellow bog-grass, and here and there a leafless birch, whose
purple tresses are even more lovely to my eye than those fragrant
green ones which she puts on in spring. Well: in painting as in
music, what effects are more grand than those produced by the
scientific combination, in endless new variety, of a few simple
elements? Enough for me is the one purple birch; the bright hollies
round its stem sparkling with scarlet beads; the furze-patch, rich
with its lacework of interwoven light and shade, tipped here and
there with a golden bud; the deep soft heather carpet, which invites
you to lie down and dream for hours; and behind all, the wall of red
fir-stems, and the dark fir-roof with its jagged edges a mile long,
against the soft grey sky.
Pages:
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162