detain the reader, and fix his mind on _them_, instead of the things
described. Certain it is that I had formed no adequate notion of the
fine river called the Yonne, with cattle grazing on its fertile banks:
those banks not clothed indeed with our soft verdure, but with royal
purple, proceeding from an autumnal daisy of that colour that enamels
every meadow at this season. Here small enclosures seem unknown to the
inhabitants, who are strewed up and down expansive views of a most
productive country; where vineyards swell upon the rising grounds, and
young wheat ornaments the valleys below: while clusters of aspiring
poplars, or a single walnut-tree of greater size and dignity unite in
attracting attention, and inspiring poetical ideas. Here is no tedious
uniformity to fatigue the eye, nor rugged asperities to disgust it; but
ceaseless variety of colouring among the plants, while the cærulean
willow, the yellow walnut, the gloomy beech, and silver theophrastus,
seem scattered by the open hand of lavish Nature over a landscape of
respectable extent, uniting that sublimity which a wide expanse always
conveys to the mind, with that distinctness so desired by the eye; which
cultivation alone can offer and fertility bestow. Every town that should
adorn these lovely plains, however, exhibits, upon a nearer approach,
misery; the more mortifying, as it is less expected by a spectator, who
requires at least some days experience to convince him that the squallid
scenes of wretchedness and dirt in which he is obliged to pass the
night, will prove more than equivalent to the pleasures he has enjoyed
in the day-time, derived from an appearance of elegance and
wealth--elegance, the work of Nature, not of man; and opulence, the
immediate gift of God, and not the result of commerce. He who should fix
his residence in France, lives like Sir Gawaine in our old romance,
whose wife was bound by an enchantment, that obliged her at evening to
lay down the various beauties which had charmed admiring multitudes all
day, and become an object of odium and disgust.