Erewhile the grass had appeared dry and parched; a few solitary and
leafless trees had been scattered up and down; there was no gaiety of
colours to relieve the eye; and not one drop of water to give freshness
to the prospect. But with the operations of magic Rodogune had delighted
to supersede the parsimony of nature. She caused the tree and the shrub
to spring forth in the richest abundance; the sturdiness of whose
trunks, or the deepness of their verdure, cheated the eye with the
semblance of the ripening hand of time. She sprinkled the turf, short,
fine, and vivid, with flowers both native and exotic. She called forth a
thousand fountains to enrich the scene. Sometimes they crept beneath the
turf in almost imperceptible threads; sometimes they ran beside the
alleys, or crossed them in sportive wantonness; and sometimes you might
see them in broader and more limpid currents rolling over a smooth and
spotted bed. Now they rose from the soil in foamy violence, and fell
upon the chalk and pebbly ground beneath; and anon they formed
themselves into the deeper bason [sic], whose calm and even surface
reflected back the reeds and shrubs that were planted round. There was
nothing strait and nothing level; the rule and the line had never
entered the delicious spot; the irregularities of the soil, and the
fantastic, gradual windings of the alleys, were calculated to give
length to the passage, and immensity to the scene.
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