I walk over the hills, to compare great things with small, as through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon looking through a gap in the wood, as through the frame of a picture, to a more distant wood or hillside, painted with several more coats of air. It is a cheap but pleasant effect. To a landscape in picture, glassed with air.
What is a horizon without mountains?
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It has new life and motion. It is intermediate between land and sky. On land, only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see the breeze dash across it in streaks and flakes of light. It is somewhat singular that we should look down on the surface of water. We shall look down on the surface of air next, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.[51]
Without inlet it lies,
Without outlet it flows.
From and to the skies
It comes and it goes.
I am its source,
I am its stony shore