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which may go under the name of American Lake Scenery.
     If I were to describe that phase of Nature which touches me most deeply, I should try to recall to your remembrance some view of forested mountain--slopes in shadow, their terminations undistinguishable amid the wooded champaign, itself interspersed with lakes & lost in a filmy distance--the sky paled to a delicate grey by the overpowering sunlight, and the shadows of mountain & forest so heightened thereby as to lose all abruptness between shadow & light-- providing thereby a dreaminess of affect highly poetical. I think this is the best light perhaps in which to exhibit our American nature in the full freshness of Early Summer greenery, as all ^apparent harshness of verduous tints is by this light toned into a modesty of colour transcendently beautiful.--And yet I must add another phase, the complement of the
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