Thoreau writes in his journal:
R.W.E. told me that W.H. Channing conjectured that the landscape looked fairer when we turned our heads, because we beheld it with nerves of the eye unused before. Perhaps this reason is worth more for suggestion than explanation. It occurs to me that the reflection of objects in still water is in a similar manner fairer than the substance, and yet we do not employ unused nerves to behold it. Is it not that we let much more light into our eyes,-which in the usual position are shaded by the brows,—in the first case by turning them more to the sky, and in the case of the reflections by having the sky placed under our feet? . . .