For an example of the opposite character, let us take a stroll to the nearest woody glen in your neighborhood- perhaps a romantic valley, half shut in on two or more sides by steep rocky banks, partially concealed and overhung by clustering vines, and tangled thickets of deep foliage. Against the sky outline breaks the wild and irregular form of some old, half decayed tree near by, or the horizontal and unique branches of the larch or the pine, with their strongly marked forms. Rough and irregular stems and trunks, rocks half covered with mosses and flowering plants, open glades of bright verdure opposed to dark masses of bold shadowy foliage, form prominent objects in the foreground. If water enlivens the scene, we shall hear the murmur of the noisy brook, or the cool dashing of the cascade, as it leaps over the rocky barrier. Let the stream turn the ancient and well-worn wheel of the old mill in the middle ground, and we shall have an illustration of the picturesque, not the less striking from its familiarity to every one.
