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of a gentle declivity just before me. I could see nothing distinctly on
account of the mist which occupied all the little valley below. A gentle
breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was about descending; and while
I remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became
dissipated into wreaths, and so floated over the scene.
As it came fully into view--thus gradually as I describe it--piece by
piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of water, and here again the summit
of a chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of
the ingenious illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of "vanishing
pictures."
By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun
had made its way down behind the gentle hills, and thence, as it with
a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight, glaring
with a purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the
west. Suddenly, therefore--and as if by the hand of magic--this whole
valley and every thing in it became brilliantly visible.
The first coup d'oeil, as the sun slid into the position described,
impressed me very much as I have been impressed, when a boy, by
the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or
melodrama. Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the
sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while
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