ABSTRACT
This chapter examines works by two eminent eighteenth-century British writers in order to throw light on the aesthetic response to waterfalls, landscape features which have, for millennia, impressed travellers and inspired artists. It describes, the responses of Johnson and Boswell to these landscape features are considered mainly in terms of the beautiful, the sublime and the picturesque, concepts widely discussed at the time of their tour. As Johnson noted, in this rainy season the hills streamed with waterfalls'. It was not only the sight of the tumbling streams that impressed the traveller. Johnson's serious purpose as a traveller should not disguise the fact. He was a tourist in the sense that he had the desire to enjoy pleasurable new experiences away from his everyday environment. Boswell clearly recognizes this when describing Johnson riding through the Highlands on horseback, jaunting about at his ease in quest of pleasure and novelty, the very different occupations from his former laborious life'.
