button to main menu  Observations on Picturesque Beauty, page 86

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vol.1 p.86
air - the hue, which naturally invests all distant objects, as well as mountains. The late Dr. Brown, author of the Estimate, in a description, which he printed, of the lake of Keswick, very justly calls these tints the yellow streams of light, the purple hues, and misty azure of the mountains. They are rarely permanent; but seem to be a sort of floating, silky colours - always in motion - always in harmony - and playing with a thousand changeable varieties into each other. They are literally colours dipped in heaven.
The variety of these tints depends on may circumstances - the season of the year - the hour of the day - a dry, or a moist atmosphere. The lines and shapes of mountains (features strongly marked) are easily caught and retained: but these meteor-forms, this rich fluctuation of airy hues, offer such a profusion of variegated splendour, that they are continually illuding the eye with breaking into each other; and are lost, as it endeavours to retain them. This airy colouring, tho in sunshine it appears most brilliant; yet in some degree it is generally found in those mountains, where it prevails.
In the late voyages round the world, published by Dr. Hawksworth, we have an account
of
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