CHAPTER LXII.
VERTY MUSES.
Let us now leave the good old town of Winchester, and go into the hills, where the brilliant autumn morning reigns, splendid and vigorous.
In the hills! Happy is the man who knows what those words mean; for only the mountain-born can understand them.

Happy, then, let us say, are the mountain-born! We will not underrate the glories of the lowland and the Atlantic shore, or close our eyes to the wealth of the sea.

The man is blind who does not catch the subtle charm of the wild waves glittering in the sun, or brooded over by the sullen storm; but "nigh gravel blind" is that other, whose eyes are not open to the grand beauty of the mountains.

Let us not rhapsodize, or with this little bit of yellow ore, venture to speak of the great piles of grandeur from whose heart it was dug up.

There is that about the mountains, with their roaring diapason of the noble pines, their rugged summits and far dying tints, purple, and gold, and azure, which no painter could express, had the genius of Titian and Watteau, and the atmosphere of Poussin, to speak over its creations.