The heights and distances, without being alpine in reality,
were sufficiently so to an eye unpractised in measuring scenery of the
highest class; but in all the softer enchantments nature had revelled
in prodigality. The gloom of the oak forest was relieved and broken by
a hundred plantations of every variety of tree that the climate would
bear, and every hue, from the sombre evergreen to the early suspicions
of the yellow leaf of autumn. Even the tops of the mountains were
free from sterility, for they were capped with green as bright, with
trees as lofty, and with pasture as rich, as that of the valleys
below.
The people, too, were very different from the inhabitants of Belgrade,
where political intrigue, and want of the confidence which sincerity
inspires, paralyze social intercourse. But the men of the back-woods,
neither poor nor barbarous, delighted me by the patriarchal simplicity
of their manners, and the poetic originality of their language. Even
in gayer moments I seemed to witness the sweet comedy of nature, in
which man is ludicrous from his peculiarities, but "is not yet
ridiculous from the affectations and assumptions of artificial life.
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