The Mysteries of Udolpho

Was nought around but images of rest,

Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between,

And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kept,

From poppies breath'd, and banks of pleasant green,

Where never yet was creeping creature seen.

Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets play'd,

And hurled every where their water's sheen,

That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade,

Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

THOMSON

When Emily, in the morning, opened her casement, she was surprised

to observe the beauties, that surrounded it. The cottage was nearly

embowered in the woods, which were chiefly of chesnut intermixed

with some cypress, larch and sycamore. Beneath the dark and spreading

branches, appeared, to the north, and to the east, the woody Apennines,

rising in majestic amphitheatre, not black with pines, as she had been

accustomed to see them, but their loftiest summits crowned with antient

forests of chesnut, oak, and oriental plane, now animated with the rich

tints of autumn, and which swept downward to the valley uninterruptedly,

except where some bold rocky promontory looked out from among the

foliage, and caught the passing gleam.

Vineyards stretched along the

feet of the mountains, where the elegant villas of the Tuscan nobility

frequently adorned the scene, and overlooked slopes clothed with

groves of olive, mulberry, orange and lemon. The plain, to which these

declined, was coloured with the riches of cultivation, whose mingled

hues were mellowed into harmony by an Italian sun. Vines, their purple

clusters blushing between the russet foliage, hung in luxuriant festoons

from the branches of standard fig and cherry trees, while pastures of

verdure, such as Emily had seldom seen in Italy, enriched the banks of

a stream that, after descending from the mountains, wound along the

landscape, which it reflected, to a bay of the sea. There, far in the

west, the waters, fading into the sky, assumed a tint of the faintest

purple, and the line of separation between them was, now and then,

discernible only by the progress of a sail, brightened with the sunbeam,

along the horizon.

The cottage, which was shaded by the woods from the intenser rays of the

sun, and was open only to his evening light, was covered entirely with

vines, fig-trees and jessamine, whose flowers surpassed in size and

fragrance any that Emily had seen. These and ripening clusters of grapes

hung round her little casement. The turf, that grew under the woods, was

inlaid with a variety of wild flowers and perfumed herbs, and, on the

opposite margin of the stream, whose current diffused freshness beneath

the shades, rose a grove of lemon and orange trees. This, though nearly

opposite to Emily's window, did not interrupt her prospect, but rather

heightened, by its dark verdure, the effect of the perspective; and

to her this spot was a bower of sweets, whose charms communicated

imperceptibly to her mind somewhat of their own serenity.