The whole garden is permeated with light
that streams down from some undiscoverable source, and its rigid trunks,
painted in a warm, lustreless grey, are splashed with an infinity of keen
lines of darker tint, since the sunshine, percolating through myriads of
sharp leaves, etches a filigree pattern upon all that lies below. You look
into endless depths of forest, but there is no change in decorative
design; the identical sword-pattern is for ever repeated on the identical
background, fading away, at last, in a silvery haze.
Here are no quaint details to attract the eye; no gorgeous colour-patterns
or pleasing irregularities of form; the frosted beauty of the scene
appeals rather to the intelligence. Contrasted with the wanton blaze of
green, the contorted trunks and labyrinthine shadow-meanderings of our
woodlands, these palm groves, despite their frenzied exuberance, figure
forth the idea of reserve and chastity; an impression which is heightened
by the ethereal striving of those branchless columns, by their joyous and
effective rupture of the horizontal, so different from the careworn tread
of our oaks and beeches.
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