Observations on the River Wye Author:William Gilpin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECT. II. THE WYE takes it's rife near the fummit of Plinlimmon ; and dividing the counties of Radnor, and Brecknoc, pafles through the middle of Herefordihir... more »e. From thence becoming a fecond boundary between Mon- mouth, and Glocefterihirc, it falls into the Severn, a .little below Chepftow. To this place from Rofs, which is a courfe of near forty miles, it flows in a gentle, uninterrupted irream ; and adorns, through it's various reaches, a fucceffion of the moft picturefque fcenes. The beauty of thefe fcenes arifes chiefly from two circumftances?the lofty banki of / J the river, and it's mazy courfe.t both which are accurately obferved by the poet, when he defcribes the Wye, as ecchoing through it's ? windingwinding bounds. It could not well ecchof unlefs it's banks were both lofty and winding. From theie two circumftances the views it exhibits, are of the moft beautiful kind of perfpective ; free from the formality of lines. Every view on a river, thus circumftanced, is compofed of four grand parts; the area, which is the river itfelf ; the two ßde-fcreenst which are the oppofite banks, and mark the peripedtive ; and thefronf-fcreen, which points out the winding of the river. If the Wye ran, like a Dutch canal, between parallel banks there could ber no front- fcreen : the two fidefcreens, in that fituation, would lengthen to a point. If a road were under the circumftance of a river winding like the Wye, the efFedt would be the fame. But this is rarely the caie. The road purfues the irregularity of the country. It climbs the hill ; and finks into the Pleas'd Vaga ecchoes thro' it's winding bounds, And rapid Severn hoarfe applaufe refounds. Pope's Eth. Ep. valley : valley : and this irregularity gives the view it exhibits, a diiferent chara...« less