Lest I should be thought extravagant in my delight, let me give you some words of George Sand, which I have since read. "I have never seen," she says, "anything so bright, and at the same time so melancholy, as these perspectives where the ilex, the carob, pine, olive, poplar, and cypress mingle their various hues in the hollows of the mountain,--abysses of verdure, where the torrent precipitates its course under mounds of sumptuous richness and an inimitable grace.... While you hear the sound of the sea on the northern coast, you perceive it only as a faint shining line beyond the sinking mountains and the great plain which is unrolled to the southward;--a sublime picture, framed in the foreground by dark rocks covered with pines; in the middle distance by mountains of boldest outline, fringed with superb trees; and beyond these by rounded hills which the setting sun gilds with burning colors, where the eye distinguishes, a league away, the microscopic profile of trees, fine as the antennæ of butterflies, black and clear as pen-drawings of India-ink on a ground of sparkling gold. It is one of those landscapes which oppress you because they leave nothing to be desired, nothing to be imagined. Nature has here created that which the poet and the painter behold in their dreams. An immense _ensemble_, infinite details, inexhaustible variety, blended forms, sharp contours, dim, vanishing depths,--all are present, and art can suggest nothing further. Majorca is one of the most beautiful countries of the world for the painter, and one of the least known. It is a green Helvetia under the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the Orient."