Toulouse, At The Period
I Speak Of, Was Up To Its Middle (And In Places Above
It) In Water, And Looks Still As If It Had Been Thoroughly
Soaked, - As If It Had Faded And Shrivelled With A Long
Steeping.
The fields and copses, of course, are more
forgiving.
The railway line follows as well the charm-
ing Canal du Midi, which is as pretty as a river, bar-
ring the straightness, and here and there occupies the
foreground, beneath a screen of dense, tall trees, while
the Garonne takes a larger and more irregular course
a little way beyond it. People who are fond of canals
- and, speaking from the pictorial standpoint, I hold
the taste to be most legitimate - will delight in this
admirable specimen of the class, which has a very in-
teresting history, not to be narrated here. On the
other side of the road (the left), all the way, runs a
long, low line of hills, or rather one continuous hill,
or perpetual cliff, with a straight top, in the shape of
a ledge of rock, which might pass for a ruined wall.
I am afraid the reader will lose patience with my habit
of constantly referring to the landscape of Italy, as if
that were the measure of the beauty of every other.
Yet I am still more afraid that I cannot apologize for
it, and must leave it in its culpable nakedness. It is
an idle habit; but the reader will long since have dis-
covered that this was an idle journey, and that I give
my impressions as they came to me.
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