the flow of the bending rivers, without rock or rapid, and the fruitfulness of the fair earth, without care or labor on the part of its inhabitants, appeal to the most pleasant passions of eye and sense, calling for no effort of body, and impressing no fear on the mind.  In hill country we have a struggle to maintain with the elements; in simple blue, we have not the luxuriance of delight:  here, and here only, all nature combines to breathe over us a lulling slumber, through which life degenerates into sensation.

199.  These considerations are sufficient to explain what we mean by the epithet “sensuality.”  Now, taking these three distinctive attributes, the mysterious, the graceful, and the voluptuous, what is the whole character?  Very nearly—­the Greek:  for these attributes, common to all picturesque blue country, are modified in the degree of their presence by every climate.  In England they are all low in their tone; but as we go southward, the voluptuousness becomes deeper in feeling as the colors of the earth and the heaven become purer and more passionate, and “the purple of ocean deepest of dye;” the mystery becomes mightier, for the greater and more universal energy of the beautiful permits its features to come nearer, and to rise into the sublime, without causing fear.  It is thus that we get the essence of the Greek feeling, as it was embodied in their finest imaginations, as it showed itself in the works of their sculptors and their poets, in which sensation was made almost equal with thought, and deified by its nobility of association; at once voluptuous, refined, dreamily mysterious, infinitely beautiful.  Hence, it appears that the spirit of this blue country is essentially Greek; though, in England and in other northern localities, that spirit is possessed by it in a diminished and degraded degree.  It is also the natural dominion of the villa, possessing all the attributes which attracted the Romans, when, in their hours of idleness, they lifted the light arches along the echoing promontories of Tiber.  It is especially suited to the expression of the edifice of pleasure; and, therefore, is most capable of being adorned by it.

200.  The attention of every one about to raise himself a villa of any kind should, therefore, be directed to this kind of country; first, as that in which he will not be felt to be an intruder; secondly, as that which will, in all probability, afford him the greatest degree of continuous pleasure, when his eye has become accustomed to the features of the locality.  To the human mind, as on the average constituted, the features of hill scenery will, by repetition, become tiresome, and of wood scenery, monotonous; while the simple blue can possess little interest of any kind.  Powerful intellect will generally take perpetual delight in hill residence; but the general mind soon feels itself oppressed with a peculiar melancholy and weariness, which it is ashamed to own; and we hear our romantic