CATARACTS AND CASCADES
It has often been remarked that no one is insensible to the beauty of flowing water. When it glides quietly on in a stream, its character is that of gentleness, and it suggests only the ideas of calm and tranquil beauty. But when it expands to a greater width, and its floods are poured forth in an impetuous tide, then it assumes the aspect of grandeur, and wakens in the beholder the emotions of sublimity.
The beauty of running water has, indeed, long been celebrated, and the river has often suggested an image illustrative of human life. Even Pliny, who wrote some two thousand years ago, likens a river to the progress of man. “Its beginnings,” he says, “are insignificant, and its infancy is frivolous; it plays among the flowers of a meadow, it waters a garden, or turns a mill. Gathering strength in its growth, it becomes wild and impetuous. Impatient of the restraint it meets with in the hollows of the mountains, it is restless and fretful, quick in its turnings, and unsteady in its course. Now it is a roaring cataract, tearing up and overturning whatever opposes its progress, and it shoots headlong down a rock; then it becomes a gloomy, sullen pool, buried in the bottom of a glen. Recovering breath by repose, it again dashes along, till, tired of uproar and mischief, it quits all that it has swept along, and leaves the opening of the valley strewed with the rejected waste. Now, quitting its retirement, it comes abroad into the world, journeying with more prudence and discretion through cultivated fields, yielding to circumstances, and winding round what would trouble it to overwhelm or remove. It passes through the populous cities, and all the busy haunts of man, tenders its services on every side, and becomes the support and ornament of the country. Increased by numerous alliances, and advanced in its course, it becomes grave and stately in its motions, loves peace and quiet, and in majestic silence rolls on its mighty waters, till it is laid to rest in the vast abyss.”