ABSTRACT

There are many parts of the earth's face which offer the necessary combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great prospect is desirable but the want may be otherwise supplied; even greatness can be found on the small scale; and the mind and the eye measure differently. The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. A great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood; its sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of one notable object from another; and a lively burn gives us in the space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of cascade, shallow, goil and boiling pool, with answerable changes both of song and colour, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles.