As they ascended, the air became purer and less impregnated with the
humidity of its lower currents; changing, by a process as fine as that
wrought by a chemical application, the hues and aspect of every object in
the view. A vast hill-side lay basking in the sun, which illuminated on
its rounded swells a hundred long stripes of grain in every stage of
verdure, resembling so much delicate velvet that was thrown in a variety
of accidental faces to the light, while the shadows ran away, to speak
technically, from this _foyer de lumiere_ of the picture, in gradations of
dusky russet and brown, until the _colonne de vigueur_ was obtained in the
deep black cast from the overhanging branches of a wood of larch in the
depths of some ravine, into which the sight with difficulty penetrated.
These were the beauties on which Adelheid most loved to dwell, for they
are always the charms that soonest strike the true admirer of nature, when
he finds himself raised above the lower and less purified strata of the
atmosphere, into the regions of more radiant light and brightness.
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