Surroundings

“ You may prefer that your secret place be a garden filled with flowers, by a lake, or in the mountains. Wherever your favorite place is, take the time to enjoy your surroundings — the colors of the flowers, the shapes and textures of different objects and materials. ”

“ The scene is the country and the very little country town, with landscape, atmosphere, simplicity, circumstance—all surroundings and conditions—VERITABLE—everything rural and dialectic, no less than the simple, primitive, common, wholesome-hearted men and women who so naturally live and have their blessed being in his stories, just as in the life itself. ”

“ Whether a body is animate or inanimate, if it has a temperature above that of its surroundings, as has been shown, it gives away more heat to them than it can receive from them, and it thus continually grows cooler in proportion to the difference between the two temperatures and to the degree of its exposure. ”

“ To us the Common or forest looks indeed crowded with people, but to them the feeling is one of sufficient space, free air, green grass, and colour, with a life without which they might think the place dull. ”

“ As I look out upon the landscape that lies before my window, and see the men and women working in the fields, and the fields smiling to man’s husbandry, when I see no marks of the spoiler, and recognize that each one is safe in his person and secure in his possessions, then it is I see peace, and think of my poor country with a sigh, and, oh, with what reflections. ”

“ Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life—from the cottage to the throne—are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have often pleased myself with the fancy that the outer aspects of life are patterned after the inner, so that in the map of the spirit are to be found city and country, wood, desert, and sea, so that we know these outer worlds through having travelled the worlds within. Though I stay behind, my eyes can follow you from this night's landmark along the stretch, on to the city avenues, up the highways, tracing the twists of the bypaths, clambering untrod trails of wilderness and mountain, on, on, till out upon the sea. ”

“ Here in all directions there were unmistakable signs of human life—the outlines of populous cities and busy towns and hamlets; roads winding far away along the plain or up the mountain-sides, and mighty works of industry in the shape of massive structures, terraced slopes, long rows of arches, ponderous pyramids, and battlemented walls. ”

“ My takings of nature increased tenfold, a hundredfold, and I came to a new acquaintance with my own garden, my own hills, and all the roads and fields around about—and even the town took on strange new meanings for me. ”

“ I declare, that when I have been for weeks roaming amongst forests and mountain wastes, I feel, on coming into a city, a sense of its life, activity, and social condition which was before become comparatively dim. ”

“ A vision of change upon change, and still the same monotony of bells and wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest. Of town and country, postyards, horses, drivers, hill and valley, light and darkness, road and pavement, height and hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same monotony of bells and wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest. ”

“ Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider, and the details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct, a luminous gray was mingled more and more with the blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows ”

“ Perhaps there is no higher appreciation of landscape beauty than that of him who emerges from the dark and narrow street of some busy city,—from its noise, and smoke, and din,—from its vexatious cares and harassing duties, and strolls out, of a bright spring morning, through the grassy fields and leafy lanes of a rural country; there is a repose, a sense of tranquil calm in the scene, so refreshing to those whose habitual rest comes of weariness and exhaustion. ”

“ We change. The valleys and the tiny towns, the unseen mites of men, the gleams or thread of roads, are prostrate, covering a little watching space before the shrine of this dominant and towering presence. ”

“ Standing quite alone, far in the forest, while the wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our reflections of a richer variety than the life of cities. ”

“ True, Sir, but we are much indebted to the pencil for introducing rural scenes and scenery into our crowded cities, by which we are told, through the medium of the eye, that there are living beauties in nature which we may see. ”

“ By-and-by we meet signs of inhabitants—a house or two; a few fields of mowing grass; the heaps of refuse at lead-mines, and our walk derives a pleasurable interest from the hourly change, the bleak, barren, and lonely, for the sheltered, the cultivated, and inhabited. ”

“ A country of hills, with that wide and picturesque horizon which only such a landscape can furnish, where the irregular outline appears as walls and watch-towers for the protection of the home territory, with here and there an open door, through which the imagination of youth or the feet of maturer years may pass out into the great world of sunshine or of cloud beyond. ”

“ Think of looking at a city street teeming with life, men and women hurrying here and there, dogs running about, children at their play, and then suddenly seeing that same street become as dead as some mountain, with the people represented as stones on that same mountain, and you can get some idea of what our friends looked upon. ”

“ Yet we see, In fancy, its green fields, its towers, and towns Smoking with life, its roads with traffic thronged And tedious travellers within iron cars, Its rivers with their ships, and laborers, To whose raised eye, as, stretched upon the sward, They may enjoy some interval of rest, That little cloud appears no living thing, Although it moves, and changes as it moves. ”

“ The further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the field of vision. My native city, with the interior of every house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. We mounted higher, and lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me. ”

“ We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. ”

“ The increasing ascent and change of direction opens a series of pleasing views, and as you look now this way, now that, along the diversified flanks of the hills, you will wish for more time to wander through such beautiful scenery. ”

“ Often in a landscape we first single out particular objects,—this old oak,—that cascade,—that ruin,—and derive from them, an individual joy; then relapsing, we view the landscape as a whole, and seem, to be surrounded by a kind of atmosphere of thought, the result of the combined influence of all. ”

“ The scenery is such as arrays itself to the imagination when we read the beautiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a softer turf, a more picturesque arrangement of venerable trees, than we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the western world. ”

“ The sudden change from the soft, low, and comparatively tame, to the bold, stern, and high, serves admirably to show how much the character of a landscape may depend on the formation which composes it. ”

“ Why any person should want to stand upon a hill-top for a whole half hour to view green lawns, gardens, meadows, and villages and cities, with their church spires and domes, he could not understand, especially after they had seen them once. ”

“ XIX I have known the lure of cities and the bright gleam of golden things, Spires, towers, bridges, rivers, and the crowd that flows as a river, Lights in the midnight streets under the rain, and the stings Of joys that make the spirit reel and shiver. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, within the city walls, one found a forest, and under the shade of the huge trees, a more miserable being than myself could have spent pleasant hours, and perhaps gained contentment of mind by observing the beauties of nature. ”

“ Look at the beautiful open space in the center. The faint light which the stars afford seems concentrated in this spot; the woods which surround it seem, with their barriers, to form its natural limits. ”

“ Child, shall I tell thee where nature [Pg 360] is most blest and fair? It is where those we love abide. Though that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms; though it be a desert, through it runs the river of paradise, and there are the enchanted bowers. ”

“ Great have been these results—how great we shall know by-and-by. Many a soul has thus been born by the sea, in the grove, on the village green, at the place where streets meet in the busy city. How can we reach the masses? ”

“ There is a splendid city on the plain; there are temples and theatres on the hills; the commerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flows through its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea has receded: the plain is a pestilent marsh ”

“ The scenery is wild and savage and primeval, being the stock of which beautiful landscapes are made, rather than the culture that gentler airs and more temperate winds bring upon the face of the earth nearer the sea and the equator. ”

“ You can watch, too, how chips of straw, corks, bits of wood, and other loose objects lying in the street are borne away, very much as the trunks of trees are carried by the river. Even in a town, therefore, you can see how changes in the sky lead to changes on the earth. ”

“ Let a race the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a river or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it pass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. ”

“ So when, as now, a chance combination of circumstances brings them leisure to look about them, the forest and the world of out-of-doors comes to them with a freshness impossible for the city dweller to realise. ”

“ Next in importance to this immensity of space, so powerfully affecting the imagination by its mere extent, and by the breadth of atmosphere attuning all varieties of form and colour to one harmony beneath illimitable heaven, may be reckoned the episodes of rivers, lakes, hills, cities, with old historic names. ”

“ The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,
Sleeping in starlight. . . .
A year ago we walked in the jangling city
Together . . . . forgetful.
One by one we crossed the avenues,
Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,
And came to the narrow, knotted streets. ”

“ On the other hand, ordinary scenery, of familiar mountains, of calm streams of water, and of dwellings just before our eyes, may be sketched with an irregularity so charming, and with such excellent skill, as almost to rival Nature. ”

“ Look beyond the toilsome way to those grand mountains, whose spurs are already stretching forward to meet us. Who knows what pleasant surprises await us amid their steep declivities? I, for my part, expect to find water, fresh grass, trees, and a lovely resting-place. ”

“ They walked about the streets at hazard, looking at the people and the houses, the shops and the vehicles, the blazing blue sky and the muddy crossings, the hurrying men and the slow-strolling maidens, the fresh red bricks and the bright green trees, the extraordinary mixture of smartness and shabbiness. ”