Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=TUAEAAAAQAAJ
(Bodleian Library)
The realities of the world are few and small; the illusions many andvast. Not a sense that we possess, and hardly a faculty of the mind,but serves to deceive us; wholly in some cases, and partially in all.Yet, strip nature and life of these deceits, and what would earthbecome?--what our existence here? See a small fly stepping over theirregularities of a looking-glass and thinking the polished surfacebut a rough and rugged plain, and we have some idea of what the worldwould be, if we saw it as perhaps it is.
Amongst the sweetest and most friendly delusions, of all the many, isthe landscape-painting of imagination. Love, himself, I believe, doesnot cheat us more, or more pleasantly. Let any traveller ask himself,when he sets eyes upon a scene which he pronounces, at once, mostbeautiful, how much of the loveliness is added by fancy. It may be agrand, an expansive view, over a wide and varied country; but what isthe mind doing while the eye is contemplating it? Peopling it withvillages--laying it out in corn-fields and vineyards--filling it withbusy life and gay enjoyment; not distinctly, not tangibly; but stillthe associations rise up in a golden mist, and spread a lustre overall. It may be, on the contrary, a narrower scene: a cottage in a deepglen, with old oaks overshadowing, and the thin blue smoke rising upamongst the green leaves. There too, is imagination busy, with thethoughts of calm retirement from a troublous world, and still, quietcontemplation--the labourer's repose after his labour--the sweetdomestic home--the tender joy of tongues and faces loving and beloved.
There is but one great magician left on earth, and that isImagination.
Reader, I very often draw from my own heart and its experience--moreoften than the world knows; and even now, I can conceive thesensations of those two horsemen as they come at a foot pace over theedge of the hill, where the splendid valley of the Neckar, with itscastled town and ancient woods, and giant mountains, first breaks uponthe eye. See how the sunshine of the summer evening, softened by thelight smoke of the city, pours through the long tall streets and overthe high walls and towers of massive stone: see how it catches on eachrocky point or prominent crag, as rounding the granite mass of theKing's Seat, in its decline towards the west, it covers the brows ofall his mountain peers with coronets of gold; and lo! where highraised above the town, upon its platform of stone, stands out thelordly castle in bright light and shade. The green, green Neckar,flowing along in the midst, winds