Ground

“ There is a lack of harmony between oneself and the ground. You rock—the ground stands still; you stand still—the ground rocks, like an angry sergeant.
The senior major was on the corner, holding an animated conversation with a beautifully gowned young lady, to whom he bid a hasty adieu as Reggy hove in sight. ”

“ I would say to him, “build not on old ground, profaned, polluted, trod into slough by filthy animals; but break new ground—virgin ground—ground that thought has never imagined or eye seen, and dig into our hearts a foundation, deep and broad as our humanity. ”

“ And though the ground beneath was hard, and the sky overhead far and boundless, and the hillside lonely and companionless, yet somewhere within the visible and beyond these the outer surface of creation, there might be a home for her ”

“ So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. ”

“ Sun Tzu said: The art of war recognizes nine varieties of ground:
(1) Dispersive ground;
(2) facile ground;
(3) contentious ground;
(4) open ground;
(5) ground of intersecting highways;
(6) serious ground;
(7) difficult ground;
(8) hemmed-in ground;
(9) desperate ground. ”

“ Chequering the ground, from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller as he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards ”

“ there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. ”

“ A habit of reasoning out the most likely cause, and all other possible causes, for the condition of things as seen, is essential. If there is a slope of the ground, a ridge, a hollow—Why is it there? What can have produced it? and Which cause is the most probable for it? The mere form of the ground will often show plainly what is beneath it. ”

“ And where the ground cannot give itself physic, yet it receives physic from other grounds, from other soils, which are not the worse for having contributed that help to them from marl in other hills, or from slimy sand in other shores, grounds help themselves, or hurt not other grounds from whence they receive help. ”

“ WE are accustomed to think of the land of the earth as something solid and fixed; and, as a testimonial of this impression, the Latin phrase terra firma, firm land or solid ground, has been naturalized in the languages of nearly all civilized peoples. ”

“ You have learnt that the various elements of the landscape have thus been gradually put together during successive ages, and that the slow processes, whereby the characteristic forms of the ground have been carved out, are still in progress under your eye. ”

“ The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the steeper sides of the hills, among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible. ”

“ Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit:
(1) Accessible ground;
(2) entangling ground;
(3) temporizing ground;
(4) narrow passes;
(5) precipitous heights;
(6) positions at a great distance from the enemy. ”

“ Ah, well, he will choose a spot where the grass is long and the ground soft for your lessons, and I can tell you it makes a good deal of difference whether you come off on ground like that or on a spot where there is next to no grass, and the ground is as hard as a brick. ”

“ For we many times, and in sundry places found ground at 50, 45, 40 fathoms, and less. The ground coming upon our lead, being sometime cozy sand and other while a broad shell, with a little sand about it. ”

“ You may have noticed those high walls which some build about their houses and grounds, so high you can get but a glimpse of the tree-tops above them; the shady walks, and gushing fountains, and green grass-plats, and bright flowers are entirely hidden from view. ”

“ The Earthy element is the solid ground upon [60] which we live. It is divided into mountains, hills, valleys, and plains, in a variety pleasing to the eye, and adapted to all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ I mean a pretty thick foreground, a view of the distant water through the near forest, through a thousand little vistas, as we are rushing towards the former, that intimate mingling of wood and water which excites an expectation that the near and open view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be concealed which our imagination may navigate. ”

“ Of necessity the plan is completely irregular. Where a space of level ground opens out between the shore and the rocks, the city has spread out; where the rocks approach the water’s edge, it is narrowed in places to a single street. ”

“ This plot of ground also would lye, as neare as you can, at the foote or bottome of an hill, both that the hill may defend the windes and sharpe weather from the same, as also that you may haue certaine ascents or risings of state, from leuell to leuell, as was in some sort before shewed in the plot for the Orchard, and shall be better declared in the next Chapter. ”

“ You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things—yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet—I say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. ”

“ Every hundred steps an enchanting picture is opened to the eye, especially in places where the mountain exhibits its own interesting geological formation, or forms a background clothed with woods or blossoming heath. ”

“ Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, as subject and as background, dates its origin from him. ”

“ 'Don't you be too sure of that.' He made two or three peculiar observations; as when shewn the botanical garden, 'Is not every garden a botanical garden?' When told that there was a shrubbery to the extent of several miles: 'That is making a very foolish use of the ground; ”

“ The wit which sparkles and flashes in a Bavarian beer-house may be as much less boisterous, or rather as much more quiet, than that which explodes over the distilled spirits of our bar-rooms, as the stimulant itself is less exciting, but is for this very reason the more genuine. Like the myriads of fire-flies on a warm summer evening amid the rising fog of a marshy ground, so gleams this wit in its smoky atmosphere ”

“ Some of the pleasantest days I have ever known in the open have been spent in the winter woods, when the snow was on the ground and everything seemed still and unfamiliar. Every little sound is accented on a cold day, and the creaking of a swaying limb or the note of a bird comes to you with almost startling distinctness. Somehow you feel on such days that you are more a part of the things about you than in the full flush of summer. It is like meeting people stripped of all the artificial distinctions of clothes and position. ”

“ Each section of the vast expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal raiment, with spare colour—blue and grey, and parsimonious green—in the near foreground. ”

“ It is not the oasis in the foreground of the desert, but the infinite level and roomy horizon, where the sky meets the sand, and into which leads the path of the pilgrim, that detains the eye and the imagination. ”

“ The land which they inhabit is very rocky: from the curved ridges of the rocks and the connecting tops of the mountains, which cut the air in multiplied sinuosities, every sound reverberates in echo upon echo from the dales below. ”

“ Unfortunately, we have never availed ourselves of an opportunity to dig out the burrow system of a Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel. We infer it to be simple and relatively short, for two reasons: the mounds at the mouths of the burrows are usually small in quantity of earth composing them; and the big roots, logs or rocks beneath which the burrows in practically all cases lead, would seem to do away with the need of an extensive and deeply penetrating system so as to secure safety from enemies which pursue their prey by digging. ”

“ Without dust there would be no blue firmament. The sky would be as dark as or darker than we see it in the finest moonless nights. The glowing disk of the sun would stand immediately upon this dark background, and the same sharp contrast would prevail upon the illuminated surface of the earth—blinding light, where the sun's rays fall, and deep black shadows where they do not. ”

“ Show the pupils how the waves dashing against the rocky coast might tear it down, and by pounding the torn pieces and rolling them about might grind them down to pebbles and sand.
1. Land.—The outside of the earth is called its surface. One part of the surface is solid, or hard. This is called the land.
We live on the land, and build our houses and towns and cities upon it. Trees and other plants grow on the land, and animals live on it. ”

“ I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a spur of the mountain's slope, a wall; for I look down from its top to the next inclosure far below, now overgrown and wild. What is natural and what was made by man has become so blended together, or has always been so, that I can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art. ”

“ Of this great and wonderful sphere, which, fashioned by the hand of God, and upheld by His power, is rolling through the heavens, a part is his—his from the center to the sky! It is the space on which the generation before moved in its round of duties, and he feels himself connected by a visible link with those who follow him, and to whom he is to transmit a home. ”

“ Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the landscape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, rock, tree, house, hill, and meadow, assuming new and varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene, and there was variety enough for our entertainment in the metamorphoses of the simplest objects. ”

“ But a rock is a rock, and a field is a field, and who wants to know whether a tree is elm or maple? I am not a geological survey, and you can get mountains enough from Craddock. Not that I am insensible to the beauties of Nature—as I have proved before now. ”

“ On one side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and, on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man. ”

“ People who live in high mountain-regions, and never look upon extensive plains, regard the earth as a sublime range, a massive dome in which peak towers above peak, as the Caucasians do, or as a lofty cone, like the Thibetans. On conceptions like these stand those religious systems which place the seat of the gods, the first home of the human race, or the abode of the dead, among lofty mountains. ”

“ The most obvious characteristic of any place, whether mountain or plain or valley, would be its shape and size, its relative situation high or low, behind or in the front, its colour, the kind of rock or soil of which it is composed, the climate which it enjoys, the vegetation in which it abounds, and the animals by which it is frequented. ”

“ When the foundations of the earth were laid, we know who it was that “measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance;” ”

“ You saw a greater extent of surface than is possible in a hilly country; all within the circumference of the horizon lay exposed to the eye. It was like seeing a section of the entire globe, or like ‘striking flat its thick rotundity.’ It was a fine clear afternoon, and in the midst of this uniformity of surface, you saw every other variety—rich meadows, with flocks and herds feeding, hedge-rows, willowy banks, woods, corn-fields, roads winding along in different directions, canals, boats 300sailing, innumerable villages, windmills, bridges, and towns and cities in the far-off horizon ”

“ Before me were long and wide plains, meadows of grass, smoothly-sloping hills, and a range of mountains beyond, which, parting in one particular spot, formed, as it were, a natural gateway, that might almost lead, in fancy, to some fairy land beyond. ”

“ While you watch them, the clouds change in the sky, the sunset wanes, and the forest covers the bared hills. Nature, fickle mistress of our destinies, spreads a never-ending panorama before our eyes that we may recognize the one great law of her being,—the law of progression. ”

“ The scattered live-oaks in the foreground, domineered by the will of the prevailing wind, have a half-frightened air; nothing of the repose of our maples, oaks, and white pines. The mountains themselves, rising with an almost monotonous uniformity of grade, are also burned as dry as a cinder, their dead-white rocks pallidly reflecting the remorseless sunlight. ”

“ If this earth moves, the chimneys would be falling, tumbling in upon the roofs of the houses, the mountains and hills would be changing and levelling down, the rivers would be emptying out. You and I would be standing on our heads. ”

“ Only at times new things begin. It is a land without hill or dale, a wonderfully level land, glittering with strange buildings, with incessant sunlight or full moon, and with incessant breezes blowing through the Æolian traceries of the trees. ”