t, it is the sky which makes the landscape. Given
the identical fields, woods, and retreating hills, and every change of
sky, every modulation of light, will produce a new landscape; in light
and atmosphere are concealed those mysteries of colour, of distance,
and of tone which clothe the changeless features of the visible world
with infinite variety and charm. This fruitful marriage of the upper
and the lower firmaments is perhaps the oldest fact known to men; it
was the earliest discovery of the first observer, it still is the most
illusive and beautiful mystery in nature. The most ancient mythologies
began with it, the latest books of science and natural observation are
still dealing with it. Myths that are older than history portray it in
lofty symbolism or in splendid histories that embody the primitive
ideals of divinity and humanity; the latest poets and painters would
fain touch their verse or their canvas with some luminous gleam from
the heart of this perpetual miracle. The unbroken procession of the
seasons changes month by month the relations of earth and sky; day and
night all the water-courses of the world rise in invisible moisture to
a fellowship with the birds that have passed on swift wing above their
currents; the great outlying seas, that sound the notes of their vast
and passionate unrest upon the shores of every continent, are
continually drawn upward to swell the invisible upper ocean which, out
of its mighty life, feeds every green and fruitful thing upon the bosom
of the earth. This movement of the oceans upon the continents through
the illimitable channels of the sky is, in some ways, the most
mysterious and the most sublime of those miracles which each day
testify to the presence and majesty of that Spirit behind Nature of
whom the greatest of modern poets thought when he wrote:

Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply
And weave for God the robe thou seest Him by.

The vast inland grain fields, that stretch in unbroken procession from
horizon to horizon, have the seas at their roots not less truly than
the fertile soil out of which they spring; the verdure upon the
mountain ranges, that keep unbroken solitude at the heart of the
continents, speaks forever of the distant oceans which nourish it, and
spread it like a vesture over the barren heights. No traveller, deep
in the recesses of the remotest inland, ever passes beyond the voice of
that encircling ocean which never died out o