то GEORGE B. EMERSON, ESQ., PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION. DEAR SIR, The germ of the present little work was a Lecture delivered before the body over which you preside, in the summer of 1841. The favor with which it was generally received, and especially your own warm commendation, in respect to its useful tendency toward the end in view, have encouraged me to this enlargement and greater finish. I now beg the honor of dedicating the humble volume, through your name, to SELFCULTURISTS, to PARENTS, to SCHOOL-TEACHERS, and to those SCENERY-SEERS who can already say, "With a pervading vision-Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world!" With the highest respect, Your obedient servant, May, 1844. WARREN BURTON. SCENERY-SHOWING. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. "How lovely, how commanding! but though Heaven Of love and admiration, yet in vain Without fair culture's kind parental aid." AKENSIDE. SCENERY is the appearance of things to the eye. The term is here applied to objects on the face of creation, so disposed by form, color, dimension, or arrangement, or by several of these circumstances together, as to afford peculiar enjoyment to the beholder. There are some, predisposed by constitution, or of fortunate early education, who scarcely remember the time when their souls were not pleasurably alive to the beauty, picturesqueness, and grandeur of nature. The perceptions of others are awakened at a later period, and then they never cease to rejoice, as at the opening of a new sense, to a divinely adapted, unalloyed, and sinless gratifica |