Ebook Lives of the English Saints

IT is often' said that things look on paper or on canvass very different from what they are in reality how Often is the traveller disappointed, on arriving at a spot of which he had read in poetry, or seen portrayed by a painter. We repeat over and over again to ourselves that it is beautiful, as if to persuade ourselves of it, and yet there is something wanting after all, we have seen woods as green, and streams as clear, and rocks as wild, and the ruined tower that looks over the stream is but a very poor ruin, as the baron who lived there was probably a very indifferent character. And yet were the poet or the painter so unfaithful as we sup pose They saw it under some particular aspect, when the sun was upon it, or when the woods were coloured by autumn, and they caught it at some moment when one Of Nature's endless combinations had made it look more than usually lovely. No two persons see the same scene under the same aspect it will not look to morrow as it does now, and yet it is the same sun, and B.