The Wye tour, or Gilpin on the Wye

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Page xvii - There is an easy ascent to the top, and the view far preferable to that on Castle-hill (which you remember) because this is lower and nearer to the Lake: for I find all points that are much elevated spoil the beauty of the valley, and make its parts (which are not large) look poor and diminutive.
Page 135 - Some rocking-stones occur near to remains of ancient fortifications, which seems to bear out a statement in one of the poems of Ossian, that the bards walked round the stone singing, and made it move as an oracle of the fate of battle. In Greece, rocking-stones occur as funeral monuments, and are generally found on conspicuous places near the sea.
Page 44 - A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods and glades intermixed; the winding of the river; the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin, contrasted with the objects of nature; and the elegant line formed by the summits of the hills, which include the whole; make all together a very enchanting piece of scenery.
Page x - But the rock, bleak, naked, and unadorned, seems scarcely to deserve a place among them. Tint it with mosses and lychens of various hues, and you give it a degree of beauty. Adorn it with shrubs and hanging herbage, and you make it still more picturesque. Connect it with wood, and water, and broken ground, and you make it in the highest degree interesting.
Page 135 - He sat in the hall of his shells in Lochlin's woody land. He called the grey-haired Snivan, that often sung round the circle of Loda : when the stone of power heard his voice, and battle turned in the field of the valiant ! "Go, grey-haired Snivan," Starno said, "go to Ardven's sea-surrounded rocks.
Page 6 - The artist, in the mean time, is confined to a span; and lays down his little rules, which he calls the principles of picturesque beauty, merely to adapt such diminutive parts of nature's surfaces to his own eye, as come within its. scope.—Hence, therefore, the painter who adheres strictly to the composition of nature, will rarely make a good picture.
Page 5 - After sailing four Miles from Ross, we came to Goodrich-castle, where a very grand view presented itself; and we rested on our oars to examine it. A reach of the river, forming a noble bay, is spread before the eye. The bank, on the right, is steep, and covered with wood; beyond which a bold promontory shoots out, crowned with a castle, rising among the trees. This view, which is one of the grandest on the river, I should not scruple to call correctly picturesque; which is seldom the character of...
Page 53 - ... unclouded, holds her way Through skies where I could count each little star. The fanning west wind scarcely stirs the leaves ; The river, rushing o'er its pebbled bed, Imposes silence with a stilly sound. In such a place as this, at such an hour, If ancestry can be in aught believed, Descending spirits have conversed with man, And told the secrets of the world unknown.
Page 29 - But what peculiarly marks this view, is a circumftance on the water. The whole river at this place makes a precipitate fall ; of no great height indeed, but enough to merit the name of a cafcade ; though to the eye, above the ftream, it is an object of no confequence.
Page 63 - The beauties are so uncommonly excellent, that the most exact critic in landscape would scarcely wish to alter a position in the assemblage of woods, cliffs, ruins, and water.

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