Positive Aesthetics: A Peculiar Interest Rather Than Beauty

When William H. Brewer returned to Lake Tahoe six months later, he tried again to describe the view:

"The landscape is an uniformly grey-brown color, no forests, no pastures, no green, but little water, nothing to cheer the eye, or revive the spirits of a passing traveller. So it seems - but at sunset & sunrise the most beautiful tints rest on the mountains, and the landscape has a peculiar beauty of its own, or perhaps a peculiar interest rather than beauty."

Here interest rises above the picturesque beauty of Europe.