initial commit of ebook 31045HEADmain

9 files changed, 11544 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/31045-8.txt b/31045-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3b2ce4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3809 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Frondes Agrestes
+       Readings in 'Modern Painters'
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: January 22, 2010 [EBook #31045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  FRONDES AGRESTES.
+
+  READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS.'
+
+  CHOSEN AT HER PLEASURE,
+  BY THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND,
+  THE YOUNGER LADY OF THE THWAITE,
+  CONISTON.
+
+  'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes.'
+
+  Thirty-Eighth Thousand.
+
+  London: George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. 1902.
+
+  Printed By Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
+  At the Ballantyne Press
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have been often asked to republish the first book of mine which the
+public noticed, and which, hitherto, remains their favourite, in a
+more easily attainable form than that of its existing editions. I am,
+however, resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts
+of it being, by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary;
+and others having been always useless, in their praise of excellence
+which the public will never give the labour necessary to discern. But,
+finding lately that one of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age,
+retains the cheerfulness and easily delighted temper of bright youth,
+had written out, for her own pleasure, a large number of passages from
+'Modern Painters,' it seemed to me certain that what such a person
+felt to be useful to herself, could not but be useful also to a class
+of readers whom I much desired to please, and who would sometimes
+enjoy, in my early writings, what I never should myself have offered
+them. I asked my friend, therefore, to add to her own already chosen
+series, any other passages she thought likely to be of permanent
+interest to general readers; and I have printed her selections in
+absolute submission to her judgment, merely arranging the pieces she
+sent me in the order which seemed most convenient for the reciprocal
+bearing of their fragmentary meanings, and adding here and there an
+explanatory note; or, it may be, a deprecatory one, in cases where my
+mind had changed. That she did me the grace to write every word with
+her own hands, adds, in my eyes, and will, I trust, in the readers'
+also, to the possible claims of the little book on their sympathy; and
+although I hope to publish some of the scientific and technical
+portions of the original volumes in my own large editions, the
+selections here made by my friend under her quiet woods at
+Coniston--the Unter-Walden of England--will, I doubt not, bring within
+better reach of many readers, for whom I am not now able myself to
+judge or choose, such service as the book was ever capable of
+rendering, in the illustration of the powers of nature, and
+intercession for her now too often despised and broken peace.
+
+Herne Hill,
+
+  5th December, 1874.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+                                                    PAGE
+  PREFACE                                              V
+
+  SECTION I.    PRINCIPLES OF ART                      1
+
+          II.   POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION       10
+
+          III.  ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY                 35
+
+          IV.       "        STREAMS AND SEA          64
+
+          V.        "        MOUNTAINS                74
+
+          VI.       "        STONES                  107
+
+          VII.      "        PLANTS AND FLOWERS      115
+
+          VIII. EDUCATION                            140
+
+          IX.   MORALITIES                           151
+
+
+
+
+FRONDES AGRESTES.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF ART.
+
+
+1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible
+pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral
+nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from
+some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or
+answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.
+
+
+2. The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically
+patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample
+upon it,--lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It
+is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of
+unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too,
+and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good
+heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but
+fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready
+to believe and to try all things; and yet so trustful of itself, that
+it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without
+trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and
+good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks
+of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its
+conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its
+delights are too penetrating,--too living,--for any whitewashed object
+or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it
+loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.
+
+
+3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit
+ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is
+ignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble;
+and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing
+lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron;
+astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven, than in
+teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in
+expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than
+in setting limbs.--Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement,
+every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something
+also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of
+nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us
+partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him
+in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences
+and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all
+inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire
+as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong
+torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow
+thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden
+charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to
+which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for
+us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our
+incitement, I say, not our reward,--for knowledge is its own
+reward,--herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and
+stars their times.
+
+
+4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty[1] that the highest pleasures
+of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to
+arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces,
+tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated
+lakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the
+unselfish duties and the inherent desires of every individual. But no
+such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which,
+leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse
+this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and
+thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until
+the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety,
+incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the
+labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour,--leaves it
+also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves
+susceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from our
+fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but
+which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always,
+harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging
+and eternal.
+
+[1] The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in
+the Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know
+all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical
+contents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which
+I doubt.
+
+
+5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power
+depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and
+becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of
+visions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting
+continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he
+has seen,--not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the
+man who has no invention is always setting things in order,[2] and
+putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming
+himself on his doings, as supreme in all ways.
+
+[2] I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a
+ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and
+orderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.
+
+
+6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,
+and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
+with quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of
+coarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
+quickly what is fine from what is common--so far acquired taste is an
+honourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in
+good taste." But,[3] so far as this higher education has a tendency to
+narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest
+of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can
+hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain,--so far as it
+fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in
+anything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in
+which it indicates some greatness of their own, (as people build
+marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they
+like the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as
+because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human
+eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads
+people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value
+of substance and heart, liking a well-_said_ thing better than a true
+thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a
+delicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,--and in all
+other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting
+truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction
+between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less
+despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure,
+and grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with
+the affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these
+several ways, the feeling induced by what is called "a liberal
+education" is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.
+
+[3] Nobody need begin this second volume sentence unless they are
+breathed like the Græme:--
+
+"Right up Ben Ledi could he press, And not a sob his toil confess."
+
+
+7. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern
+facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again
+brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their
+noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies,
+will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his
+dreams.[4]
+
+[4] Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the
+government of the mind is, than the force of its exertion. Nearly all
+the world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.
+
+
+8. All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted. Moses
+has never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere
+ruddy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.[5] What
+single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so
+much as the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or
+aged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked
+at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for
+David, or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had
+suggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he
+would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,
+representing, doubtless, Diana and Actæon, or Cupid and the Graces, or
+a gambling quarrel in a pothouse--with no sense of pain or surprise?
+Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that
+what I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and
+sincere never yet has existed.
+
+[5] I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi,
+or Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper
+feelings, even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,--Tintoret and Fra
+Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with
+the greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for _them_,
+remains true.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.
+
+
+9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,--that is to say,
+of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which
+cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,[6] to
+enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded
+as belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this.
+It is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven,
+and earth, and sea, as if they were now present,--the souls of the
+righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the
+inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most
+desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the
+ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the
+mountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes
+and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if
+in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer.
+Its second and ordinary use is, to empower us to traverse the scenes
+of all other history, and to force the facts to become again visible,
+so as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made
+if we had witnessed them; and, in the minor necessities of life, to
+enable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of
+enjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and, in any
+present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
+hours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in
+allegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce
+them; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
+with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
+suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
+companionship, instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies
+in the grass, and naiads in the wave.
+
+[6] I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question
+here raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement,
+the account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture
+on Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make
+it generally accessible.
+
+
+10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination,
+let none of us despise the power and art of memory.
+
+Let the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to
+have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
+rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the
+leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the
+fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting
+upon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble
+sun-stain, (though even that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which
+should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed.
+Or rather, (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus
+sufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it would be in effect
+nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment
+into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied
+spirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the
+present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very
+bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them
+in act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was
+granted to the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them
+fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and
+stayed on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning
+purpose.--Conceive, so far as is possible, such power as this, and
+then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly
+of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half-divine, a gift
+which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with
+the felicities, of angels.[7]
+
+[7] Passage written in opposition to the vulgar notion that the 'mere
+imitation' of Nature is easy, and useless.
+
+
+11. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I
+do not mean by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation of
+speaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
+between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings
+and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually
+know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions,
+but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not
+think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a
+good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has found
+fault with his work,--"It cannot be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton
+knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled
+anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to
+fall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of
+powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but
+_through_ them--that they could not do or be anything else than God
+made them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other
+man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
+
+
+12. As far as I can observe, it is a constant law, that the greatest
+men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and
+the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age.
+Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the
+fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in
+the sixteenth; all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor
+error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital
+present. If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays
+on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they
+_are_ perfect plays, just because there is no care about centuries in
+them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
+time--and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give universal
+truth, but because painting, honestly and completely, from the men
+about him, he painted that human nature which is indeed constant
+enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being _at heart_ what a
+rogue is in the nineteenth, and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
+knightly man being in like manner very similar to other such at any
+other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
+always universal; not because it is not _portrait_, but because it is
+_complete_ portrait, down to the heart, which is the same in all ages;
+and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it
+is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, the
+manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakespeare
+paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature, as they saw
+it in their time, down to the root; and it does for _all_ time; but as
+for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of
+thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will
+find it in neither of them,[8] nor in any other perfectly great man
+that I know of.
+
+[8] What vestige of Egyptian character is there, for instance, in
+Cleopatra?--of Athenian in Theseus or Timon?--of old English in Imogen
+or Cordelia?--of old Scottish in Macbeth?--or even of mediæval Italian
+in Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, or Desdemona? And the Roman plays
+appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the
+eternal strength of the world,--pure family life, sustained by
+agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood.
+
+
+13. I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my
+calling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of
+literature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of
+Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson,
+may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless
+glance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of his
+youth; and those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the
+French novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the
+influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my
+ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in
+an age which has produced De Balzac, and Goethe.[9]
+
+[9] I knew nothing of Goethe when I put him with Balzac; but the
+intolerable dulness which encumbers the depth of Wilhelm Meister, and
+the cruel reserve which conceals from all but the intensest readers the
+meaning of Faust, have made him, in a great degree, an evil influence in
+European literature; and Evil is always second-rate.
+
+But the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and
+description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether
+of lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw.
+The true seer feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much
+describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;
+leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels,
+but goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing
+and careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this
+plain recording of what people said, and did; or with the right
+invention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that
+to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a
+story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage
+concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what
+happens; which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
+separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it
+oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that
+noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of
+somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even, therefore,
+where this sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of
+Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the
+creative; and though perfection even in narrow fields is perhaps as
+rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another "In
+Memoriam" as another "Guy Mannering," I unhesitatingly receive as a
+greater manifestation of power, the right invention of a few sentences
+spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the
+most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.
+
+
+14. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy;
+but Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven.
+Shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from
+breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon
+her the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the
+keeping of the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.[10]
+
+[10] I leave this passage, as my friend has chosen it; but it is
+unintelligible without the contexts, which show how all the emotions
+described in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on
+trust in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.
+
+
+15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great
+man will "bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him,
+and answer some end for which no other word would have done equally
+well. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to
+apply the word 'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There
+is a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
+agreeableness, but it seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it
+complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
+seems increased; and when farther he is at one and the same moment to
+be called a 'whelp' and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common
+idealist might well be brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do
+it:--
+
+                    "Awake his warlike spirit,
+  And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
+  Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
+  Making defeat on the full power of France,
+  While his most mighty father on a hill
+  Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
+  Forage in blood of French nobility."
+
+
+16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree
+of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses
+us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty.
+That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and
+glittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing
+that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may
+be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space
+of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand
+bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but
+because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work,
+and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet
+high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly
+impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and
+knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
+that we are not conscious of them.
+
+
+17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the
+sight of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion
+hanging, like dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and
+imperfect knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its size, coupled
+with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and
+foundations; then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of
+its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon
+its side;--then, and in very sadness, a sense of strange companionship
+with past generations, in seeing what they saw. They did not see the
+clouds that are floating over your head, nor the cottage wall on the
+other side of the field, nor the road by which you are travelling. But
+they saw _that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to
+them as to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease
+to look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
+with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
+gifts and glories of the Alp;--the fancying forth of all the fountains
+that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of
+its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs,
+and all the châlets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads
+couched upon its pastures; while, together with the thoughts of these,
+rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and
+happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the
+everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. These images, and
+far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at
+the sight of the Alps. You may not trace them in your heart, for there
+is a great deal more in your heart, both of evil and good, than you
+can ever trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that.
+Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain
+than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the
+kind of images which cause you to do so; and observe, these are
+nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the thing.
+We call the power 'Imagination,' because it imagines or conceives; but
+it is only noble imagination, if it imagines or conceives the _truth_.
+And according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility
+to the pathetic or impressive character of the things known, will be
+the degree of this imaginative delight.
+
+
+18. So natural is it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather
+than in present possession, and so subtle is the charm which the
+imagination casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often
+a more touching power in the scenes which contain far-away promises of
+something greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the
+treasures and powers of nature in an unconquerable and excellent
+glory, leaving nothing more to be by fancy pictured or pursued. I do
+not know that there is a district in the world more calculated to
+illustrate this power of the expectant imagination than that which
+surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it
+towards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably elevated, but
+presenting no object of striking interest to the passing traveller; so
+that as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the
+Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other
+sensation than that of weariness, all the more painful because
+accompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the
+splendour of the Bernese Oberland. The traveller--foot-sore, feverish,
+and satiated with glacier and precipice,--lies back in the corner of
+the diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is winding
+and hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and
+tame. Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of
+staying in it a few days, until his mind has recovered its tone, and
+take one or two long walks through its fields, and he will have other
+thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating district of grey
+sandstone, never attaining any considerable height, but having enough
+of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of
+bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to
+render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges.
+Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some
+five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the
+gentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; and then,
+suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath,
+the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff
+that form its banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them,
+at its turns, into perilous over-hanging; and, on the other shore, at
+the same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the
+water, half overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness,
+inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers
+along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for existence
+beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and murmurs
+in an outer solitude. It is passing through a thickly peopled country;
+but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away
+torrent among the high hills has its companions; the goats browse
+beside it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with
+his staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his
+mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions; it flows on in an
+infinite seclusion, not secret, nor threatening, but a quietness of
+sweet daylight and open air--a broad space of tender and deep
+desolateness, drooped into repose out of the midst of human labour and
+life; the waves plashing lowly, with none to hear them; and the wild
+birds building in the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the
+soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading, with no hand to
+gather them;--and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to
+the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the
+brows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few
+steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and
+wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the
+ravine,--and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness;
+the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its
+pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden,
+and goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, hard,
+park-like roads rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or
+disappearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the wild
+raspberry and rose, or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half
+glade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns
+trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house,
+surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries,
+and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening
+to look upon in their delicate homeliness--delicate, yet in some sort,
+rude; not like our English homes--trim, laborious, formal,
+irreproachable in comfort--but with a peculiar carelessness and
+largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed
+loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in
+all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and
+fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to
+the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing
+wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from
+desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,--a generous land, bright
+with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful
+fulness, kind and wild. Nor this without some sterner element mingled
+in the heart of it. For, along all its ridges stand the dark masses of
+innumerable pines,[11] taking no part in its gladness; asserting
+themselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished
+even in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the
+night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy
+bendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest,
+and tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against
+the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet
+they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there
+chiefly to show how bright everything else is round them; and all the
+clouds look of pure silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter
+and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points
+of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing green where
+they run up between the purple trunks; and the sweet field footpaths
+skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up
+and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and
+then hopelessly among the violets and ground-ivy and brown sheddings
+of the fibrous leaves, and at last plunging into some open aisle,
+where the light through the distant stems shows that there is a chance
+of coming out again on the other side; and coming out indeed in a
+little while from the scented darkness into the dazzling air and
+marvellous landscape, which stretches still farther and farther in new
+wilfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of
+the Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern
+clouds.
+
+[11] Almost the only pleasure I have, myself, in rereading my old books,
+is my sense of having at least done justice to the pine. Compare the
+passage in this book, No. 47.
+
+
+19.[12] Although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however
+apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure; though the
+whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most
+travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire,
+Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts
+aside, there is not an English county which I should not find
+entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,--yet all
+my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills,
+colouring with their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb.
+The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either
+by what real mountain character it has in itself, (for in extent and
+succession of promontory, the flanks of the French valleys have quite
+the sublimity of true mountain distances,) or by its broken ground and
+rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above against
+the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave
+of the Seine, but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the
+sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope of the
+Alps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads to the southwest,
+the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be
+no hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot deceive myself
+into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be
+the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the
+landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness
+and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor
+Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual
+summer--or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to
+Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for
+one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.
+
+[12] This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the
+general statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own
+idiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it
+was, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome
+reedy fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.
+
+
+20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always
+in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the
+foot of the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble
+unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet
+without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom,
+eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea
+grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not
+falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
+fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of
+what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having
+no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for
+pity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly
+garrulous of better days; but, useful still, going through its own
+daily work,--as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing
+his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth,
+in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering
+human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer
+still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far
+across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of
+surfy sand and hillocked shore,--the lighthouse for life, and the
+belfry for labour, and this--for patience and praise.
+
+I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come
+about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the
+epitome of all that makes the continent of Europe interesting, as
+opposed to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that
+agedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new
+into harmony. We in England have our new streets, our new inn, our
+green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it--a mere
+_specimen_ of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet, to be
+shown; and which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf
+at once, under cover;--but, on the Continent, the links are unbroken
+between the past and present; and, in such use as they can serve for,
+the grey-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in
+unbroken line, the generations of spared buildings are seen
+succeeding, each in its place. And thus, in its largeness, in its
+permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of
+all pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais
+tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking
+because usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of
+feelings the exact reverse of these.[13]
+
+[13] My friend won't write out the reverse! Our book is to be all jelly,
+and no powder, it seems. Well, I'm very thankful she likes the
+jelly,--at any rate, it makes me sure that _it_ is well made.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY.
+
+
+21. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the
+sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the
+sake of pleasing man--more for the sole and evident purpose of talking
+to him, and teaching him--than in any other of her works; and it is
+just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of
+her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than
+the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their
+organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as
+we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great,
+ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything
+well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps
+a film of morning and evening mist for dew;--and instead of this,
+there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when Nature is not
+producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory,
+and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the
+most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain[14] it is all done for
+us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever
+placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has
+this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be
+seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live
+always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he
+ceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is for all:
+bright as it is, it is not
+
+    "too bright nor good
+  For human nature's daily food;"
+
+it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and
+exalting of the heart,--for soothing it, and purifying it from its
+dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes
+awful--never the same for two moments together; almost human in its
+passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its
+infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its
+ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is
+essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject
+of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look
+upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon
+all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are
+to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew
+which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of
+meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be
+worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in
+our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a
+last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has
+been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been
+warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms
+and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded
+the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
+out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and
+mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead
+clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew
+them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as
+unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it
+is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not
+in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not
+in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the
+highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the
+earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are
+but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be
+addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued
+passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the
+perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it
+is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet
+vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are
+to be found always, yet each found but once;--it is through these that
+the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty
+given.
+
+[14] At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At
+five-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other
+creatures in the universe to be pleased, or,--it may be,--displeased, by
+the weather.
+
+
+22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not
+knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most
+dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the
+rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt
+imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into
+apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all
+these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour,
+and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the
+barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of
+cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe
+or sheaf of lighted rain.
+
+
+23. Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes
+visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you
+not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can
+see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being
+thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light.
+Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a
+palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a
+real obstacle to the vision--you cannot see things clearly through it.
+In the same way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse rays,
+there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the
+purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the
+degree of illumination. But where vapour is in shade, it has very
+little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and greyer
+than it otherwise would be, but not, itself, unless very dense,
+distinguishable or felt as mist.
+
+
+24. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are?
+
+[15]That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level
+and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an
+inundation--why is _it_ so heavy, and why does it lie so low, being
+yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of
+morning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those
+colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and
+strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery
+flanks,--why are _they_ so light, their bases high over our heads,
+high over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not as the sun
+_rises_, but as he _descends_, and leave the stars of twilight clear;
+while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth, like a shroud? Or
+that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay,
+which does _not_ steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round
+them, and yet,--and yet,--slowly; now falling in a fair waved line
+like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an
+instant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with
+that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and weaves itself among
+their branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the
+moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some strong
+enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within
+those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's
+bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hills--that white
+arch which never forms but over the supreme crest,--how is it stayed
+there, repelled apparently from the snow,--nowhere touching it, the
+clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving
+it--poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? Or those war clouds
+that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire,--how is
+their barbed strength bridled? What bits are those they are champing
+with their vapourous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued
+leviathans of the Sea of Heaven,--out of their nostrils goeth smoke,
+and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him
+that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the
+habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the
+measures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from
+morning until evening--what rebuke is this which has awed them into
+peace;--what hand has reined them back by the way in which they came?
+
+[15] This is a fifth volume bit, and worth more attention.
+
+I know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these
+are easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the
+mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all.
+"Knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be
+one of pride? The wondrous works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge?
+Is _our_ knowledge ever to be so?...
+
+For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I
+think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see
+less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him
+with hard questions; to which perhaps, if we look close at the
+heavenly scroll, we may find also a syllable or two of answer,
+illuminated here and there.[16]
+
+[16] Compare, in 'Sartor Resartus,' the boy's watching from the garden
+wall.
+
+And though the climates of the south and east may be _comparatively_
+clear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air.
+Intense clearness, whether, in the north, after or before rain, or in
+some moments of twilight in the south, is always, as far as I am
+acquainted with natural phenomena, a _notable_ thing. Mist of some
+sort, or mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general
+facts; the distance may vary in different climates at which the
+effects of mist begin, but they are always present; and therefore, in
+all probability, it is meant that we should enjoy them.... We surely
+need not wonder that mist and all its phenomena have been made
+delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend
+on our being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those
+matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
+intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we
+shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and
+power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and
+live in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and closing there;
+rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of
+stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in
+the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where
+the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness
+wearied. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the
+mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken
+for virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed
+unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge
+must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,)
+wherever _pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light
+may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man
+perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and
+if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery
+as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in
+humbleness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think
+that every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in
+knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more
+which it cannot know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over
+this, for we may always know more, if we choose, by working on; but
+the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing that the
+journey is endless, the treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud
+still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure
+that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the mysteries
+of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness
+being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I
+know there are an evil mystery, and a deathful dimness,--the mystery
+of the great Babylon--the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do
+not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which
+the "angels desire to look into," or with the dimness which, even
+before the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the
+eternal volume.
+
+
+25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,[17] when the night mists
+first rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields,
+as they float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded
+summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder
+and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch
+when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam
+of their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under
+their depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis,
+between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
+every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the
+wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests
+and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the
+plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists
+rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the
+winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the
+morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
+leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of
+material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear
+again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible
+dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in
+the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a
+little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into
+white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy
+and motionless, only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into
+the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the
+pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of
+narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch,
+with their grey network, and take the light off the landscape with an
+eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of
+the leaves, together;--and then you will see horizontal bars of black
+shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you
+know not how, among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them
+form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant
+ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice, as a hawk
+pauses over his prey;--and then you will hear the sudden rush of the
+awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapour swept
+away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain, let
+down to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black bending
+fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its
+surface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall
+see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their
+broad sides smoking and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like
+rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again,--while the
+smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball
+beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing
+wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no
+more, dyeing all the air about it with blood;--and then you shall hear
+the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see
+a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter,
+brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted
+up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after
+star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an
+army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light
+upon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company,
+troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole
+heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And
+then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and
+the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a
+wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch
+the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains,
+like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of
+solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
+morning--their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
+the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
+altar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
+flushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer
+light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
+every wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
+canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault
+beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels;
+and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
+bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
+who has best delivered this His message unto men!
+
+[17] I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection
+of the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand
+for a day and night in observation; to suffer the effects of a severe
+thunder-storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such
+a storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much
+doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.
+
+
+26.[18] The account given of the stages of creation in the first
+chapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the
+simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the second
+day. I suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers
+without any endeavour to understand it, and contemplated by simple and
+faithful readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be
+understood. But there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter,
+and it seems to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And
+the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being the
+first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only one in
+which the word "Heaven," all-important as that word is to our
+understanding of the most precious promises of Scripture, receives a
+definite explanation. Let us therefore see whether, by a little
+careful comparison of the verse with other passages in which the word
+occurs, we may not be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of
+this portion of the chapter as of the rest. In the first place the
+English word, "Firmament," itself is obscure and useless; because we
+never employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys no other
+distinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity with
+it we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point
+nor value than if it were written, "God said, Let there be a something
+in the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven." But
+the marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value; and the
+statement that "God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of
+the waters, and God called the expansion, Heaven," has an
+apprehensible meaning. Accepting this expression as the one intended,
+we have next to ask what expansion there is, between two waters,
+describable by the term "heaven." Milton adopts the term "expanse,"
+but he understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds
+the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water beyond
+the air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division
+of waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. Now with respect to
+this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is intended for
+the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and
+that therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the
+likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows
+little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere
+surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the
+sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of
+the bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being
+able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, "expansion in
+the midst of the waters;" and if, having once seized this idea, he
+proceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if
+he had ever noticed _anything_ of the nature of clouds, that the level
+line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide
+"waters from waters"--that is to say, divide water in its collective
+and tangible state, from water in its aërial state; or the waters
+which _fall_, and _flow_, from those which _rise_, and _float_. Next,
+if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word
+_heaven_, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's
+dwelling-place, we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of
+cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on Sinai; appearing in a cloud on
+the mercy-seat; filling the Temple of Solomon with the cloud when its
+dedication is accepted; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel;
+ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount
+Olivet; and in like manner returning to judgment: "Behold He cometh
+with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." "Then shall they see the
+Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great
+glory." While, further, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as
+interchangeable words in those psalms which most distinctly set forth
+the power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made
+darkness pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of
+the skies." And again, "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy
+faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And again, "His excellency is
+over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds." And again, "The
+clouds poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy
+thunder was in the heaven." Again, "Clouds and darkness are round
+about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His
+throne; the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see
+His glory." In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable if they
+possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely
+for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the
+apprehension of their life and power. The expression, "He bowed the
+heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a
+magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful
+manifestation of God's power to the writer of the psalm in which the
+words occur. But the expression either has _plain_ meaning, or it has
+_no_ meaning. Understand by the term "heavens" the compass of infinite
+space around the earth, and the expression "bowed the heavens,"
+however sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space cannot be
+bent or bowed. But understand by the "heavens" the veil of clouds
+above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor
+obscure; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not
+as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He
+is still doing before our own eyes, day by day. By accepting the words
+in their simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate
+presence of the Deity, and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near
+us whenever the storm-cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague
+and inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His
+presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know:
+and gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who "maketh
+the clouds His chariot," we define and explain ourselves into dim and
+distant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places,
+and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature.
+All errors of this kind--and in the present day we are in constant and
+grievous danger of falling into them--arise from the originally
+mistaken idea that man can, "by searching, find out God--find out the
+Almighty to perfection"--that is to say, by help of courses of
+reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the
+Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of
+comparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the
+beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to
+His creatures should be a _simple_ way, which _all_ those creatures
+may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity
+or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should
+be possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be
+rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their
+having a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the
+Deity has stooped from His throne, and has, not only in the person of
+the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human _flesh_, but, in the
+person of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our human _thoughts_,
+and permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply
+and clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with
+and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our
+rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and
+glorified by our labour; and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and
+active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This
+conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one
+which can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which _for us_
+can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to
+accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of
+stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we
+hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge
+higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,--God
+takes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and
+inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our
+ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we
+are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no
+God."
+
+[18] This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and
+best, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify
+it, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received
+as it explains them, or neglected altogether.
+
+I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own
+creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and
+imagination it would be received by a simple-minded man; and finding
+that "the heavens and the earth" are spoken of always as having
+something like equal relation to each other, ("Thus the heavens and
+the earth were finished, and all the host of them,") I reject at once
+all idea of the term "heavens" being intended to signify the infinity
+of space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite
+heavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the
+sun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation to them, no
+relation of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I suppose
+the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal
+companionship with our globe; I understand the "rolling of these
+heavens together as a scroll," to be an equal and relative destruction
+with the melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the
+making of the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned,
+most magnificent ordinance of the clouds;--the ordinance that, as the
+great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a
+plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the
+face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper
+and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their
+nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their
+own bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or
+rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices, from
+pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided
+through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleasure like
+the armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the
+heights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for ever, moving but
+to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but
+covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing
+the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of diverse colours,
+of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries
+flame.
+
+This I believe is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me
+that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means
+us to acknowledge His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and
+blessing us: "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the
+presence of God." "He doth set His bow in the clouds," and thus
+renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promises of
+everlasting love. "In them hath He set a _tabernacle_ for the sun;"
+whose burning ball, which, without the firmament, would be seen but as
+an intolerable and scorching circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by
+that firmament surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by
+mediatorial ministries: by the firmament of clouds the temple is
+built, for his presence to fill with light at noon; by the firmament
+of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening, round the sanctuary of
+his rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is
+divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that
+fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which
+the mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring.
+And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the
+shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of
+His own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the
+Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot
+behold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men,
+those heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: "Swear not, neither by
+heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His
+footstool!" And all those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and
+grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about
+the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and
+glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our
+hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple
+words, "Our Father, which art in heaven."
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: STREAMS AND SEA.
+
+
+27. Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature,
+and without assistance and combination, water is the most wonderful.
+If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty
+which we have seen in clouds,--then, as the instrument by which the
+earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags
+chiselled into grace;--then, as in the form of snow, it robes the
+mountains it has made with that transcendent light which we could not
+have conceived if we had not seen;--then, as it exists in the foam of
+the torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which
+rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging
+shore, in the broad lake and glancing river;--finally, in that which
+is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable
+power the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea;--what
+shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and
+beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling?
+It is like trying to paint a soul!
+
+
+28. The great angel of the sea--rain; the angel, observe,--the
+messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the
+diffused, perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and
+returning of the intermittent cloud. All turns upon that
+intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock; cave fern of tangled glen;
+wayside well--perennial, patient, silent, clear, stealing through its
+square font of rough-hewn stone; ever thus deep, no more;--which the
+winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of
+stain as of decline;--where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the
+insect darts undefiling: cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted
+even in flood scarcely over its stepping stones,--but through all
+sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water
+among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the
+strong river gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted
+and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie
+ghastly and bare; but here in the moss lands, the soft wings of the
+sea angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter
+on the hills; strange laughings and glitterings of silver streamlets,
+born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel,
+answering to them as they wave.
+
+
+29. Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the
+north side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of
+water first bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the
+arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome
+of crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen
+except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star;
+and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves,[19] at
+the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that
+foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and
+how, ever and anon startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray
+leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and
+driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how through the
+curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the
+water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through
+white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous
+stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the
+choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the
+thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild
+water,--their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of
+loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again
+upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away,--the dew gushing from
+their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and
+sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding
+the lichens, which chase and chequer them with purple and silver.
+
+[19] Well noticed. The drawing of the fall of Schaffhausen, which I made
+at the time of writing this study, was one of the very few, either by
+other draughtsmen or myself, which I have seen Turner pause at with
+serious attention.
+
+
+30. Close beside the path by which travellers ascend the Montanvert
+from the valley of Chamouni, on the right hand, where it first begins
+to rise among the pines, there descends a small stream from the foot
+of the granite peak known to the guides as the Aiguille Charmoz. It is
+concealed from the traveller by a thicket of alder, and its murmur is
+hardly heard, for it is one of the weakest streams of the valley. But
+it is a constant stream, fed by a permanent, though small, glacier;
+and continuing to flow even to the close of summer, when more copious
+torrents, depending only on the melting of the lower snows, have left
+their beds,--"stony channels in the sun." The long drought which took
+place in the autumn of 1854, sealing every source of waters except
+these perpetual ones, left the torrent of which I am speaking, and
+such others, in a state peculiarly favourable to observance of their
+_least_ action on the mountains from which they descend. They were
+entirely limited to their own ice fountains, and the quantity of
+powdered rock which they brought down was, of course, at its minimum,
+being nearly unmingled with any earth derived from the dissolution of
+softer soil, or vegetable mould, by rains. At three in the afternoon,
+on a warm day in September, when the torrent had reached its average
+maximum strength for the day, I filled an ordinary Bordeaux wine flask
+with the water where it was least turbid. From this quart of water I
+obtained twenty-four grains of sand and sediment more or less fine. I
+cannot estimate the quantity of water in the stream; but the runlet of
+it at which I filled the flask was giving about two hundred bottles a
+minute, or rather more, carrying down, therefore, about three quarters
+of a pound of powdered granite every minute. This would be forty-five
+pounds an hour; but allowing for the inferior power of the stream in
+the cooler periods of the day, and taking into consideration, on the
+other side, its increased power in rain, we may, I think, estimate its
+average hour's work at twenty-eight or thirty pounds, or a
+hundredweight every four hours. By this insignificant runlet,
+therefore, rather more than two tons of the substance of the Mont
+Blanc are displaced and carried down a certain distance every week;
+and as it is only for three or four months that the flow of the stream
+is checked by frost, we may certainly allow eighty tons for the mass
+which it annually moves. It is not worth while to enter into any
+calculation of the relation borne by this runlet to the great torrents
+which descend from the chain of Mont Blanc into the valley of
+Chamouni.[20] I but take this quantity, eighty tons, as the result of
+the labour of a scarcely noticeable runlet at the side of one of them,
+utterly irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of
+mountain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the
+flank of a soft rock looking like a trench for a railroad), and we
+shall then begin to apprehend something of the operation of the great
+laws of change which are the conditions of all material existence,
+however apparently enduring. The hills, which, as compared with living
+beings, seem "everlasting," are in truth as perishing as they; its
+veins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart, as the crimson
+pulse does ours; the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its
+appointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a human old age;
+and it is but the lapse of the longer years of decay which, in the
+sight of its Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from the moth
+and the worm.
+
+[20] I have slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient
+of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the
+ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of the larger streams.
+
+
+31. Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of
+a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days
+and nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be
+unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the
+complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water,
+from its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere creamy foam,
+but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths
+from wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon
+like a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
+dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,
+which make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are
+a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in
+their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the
+water is under a great cataract,--and their masses, being thus half
+water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise,
+and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like
+actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its
+moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
+described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
+finely divided water, but with boiling mist: imagine also the low
+rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
+seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to
+wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch
+of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
+precipices and peaks furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all
+this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
+distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
+nor any landmark, or natural evidence of position is left; that the
+heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no
+farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract.[21]
+
+[21] The whole of this was written merely to show the meaning of
+Turner's picture of the steamer in distress, throwing up signals. It is
+a good study of wild weather; but, separate from its aim, utterly feeble
+in comparison to the few words by which any of the great poets will
+describe sea, when they have got to do it. I am rather proud of the
+short sentence in the 'Harbours of England,' describing a great breaker
+against rock:--"One moment, a flint cave,--the next, a marble
+pillar,--the next, a fading cloud." But there is nothing in
+sea-description, detailed, like Dickens' storm at the death of Ham, in
+'David Copperfield.'
+
+
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+32. The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are
+followed immediately by those notable ones,--"And God said, Let the
+waters which are under the heavens be gathered together into one
+place, and let the dry land appear." We do not, perhaps, often enough
+consider the deep signification of this sentence. We are too apt to
+receive it as the description of an event vaster only in its extent,
+not in its nature, than the compelling of the Red Sea to draw back
+that Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling
+the waves of the greater ocean together on an heap, and setting bars
+and doors to them eternally. But there is a far deeper meaning than
+this in the solemn words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of
+the Psalm, "His hands prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the
+earth had been _void_; for, it had been _without_ _form_. The command
+that the waters should be gathered, was the command that the earth
+should be _sculptured_. The sea was not driven to its place in
+suddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to its place in perfect
+and patient obedience. The dry land appeared, not in level sands
+forsaken by the surges, which those surges might again claim for their
+own; but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for
+ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the
+clouds of heaven.
+
+What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of Genesis, is
+not at present of any importance for us to consider. By what furnaces
+of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it
+was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea-waves it was
+engraven and finished into its perfect form, we may, perhaps,
+hereafter endeavour to conjecture; but here, as in few words the work
+is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be
+comprehended by us; and, as we read the mighty sentence, "Let the dry
+land appear," we should try to follow the finger of God as it engraved
+upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its
+everlasting form, as gulf by gulf the channels of the deep were
+ploughed; and cape by cape the lines were traced with Divine
+foreknowledge of the shores that were to limit the nations; and chain
+by chain the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their
+foundations fastened for ever; and the compass was set upon the face
+of the depth, and the fields and the highest part of the dust of the
+world were made; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow
+on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary.
+
+It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not
+possible, to conjecture the manner or the time in which this work was
+done; but it is deeply necessary for all men to consider the
+magnificence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wisdom
+and love which are manifested in the ordinances of the hills. For
+observe, in order to bring the world into the form which it now bears,
+it was not mere _sculpture_ that was needed; the mountains could not
+stand for a day unless they were formed of materials altogether
+different from those which constitute the lower hills, and the
+surfaces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be prepared for
+every mountain chain, yet not so hard but that it might be capable of
+crumbling down into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest, and the
+Alpine flower; not so hard but that in the midst of the utmost majesty
+of its enthroned strength there should be seen on it the seal of
+death, and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth
+against the human frame, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
+return." And with this perishable substance the most majestic forms
+were to be framed that were consistent with the safety of man; and the
+peak was to be lifted and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as
+was possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks
+upon the slopes, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. And
+observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in doing this. It
+was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such eminences should be
+created, in order to fit the earth in any wise for human habitation;
+for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing
+of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most
+part plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the
+purifying of the winds, are the least of the services appointed to the
+hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's
+working--to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of
+astonishment,--are their higher missions. They are as a great and
+noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and
+covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is
+impossible to examine, in their connected system, the features of even
+the most ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has
+been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest
+compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the heart of man:
+"as far as _possible_,"--that is, as far as is consistent with the
+fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death
+must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them,
+and the briar and thorn spring up upon them; but they so smite as to
+bring their rocks into the fairest forms, and so spring as to make the
+very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland
+and Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, and
+always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange how many deep
+sources of delight are gathered into the compass of their glens and
+vales; and how, down to the most secret cluster of their far-away
+flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the whole
+heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding
+forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so
+passionate, that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at
+last, neglects of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among the
+true mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose of appeal at
+once to all the faculties of the human spirit becomes still more
+manifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the
+richness of the valleys at their feet; the grey downs of southern
+England and treeless coteaux of central France, and grey swells of
+Scottish moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves,
+are at least destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields
+of the lowlands. But the great mountains _lift_ the lowlands on _their
+sides_. Let the reader imagine first the appearance of the most varied
+plain of some richly cultivated country; let him imagine it dark with
+graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the space
+of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents
+of scenery and life; leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows,
+strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet
+footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy
+flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle; and when he has wearied
+himself with endless imagining, and left no space without some
+loveliness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its
+infinite treasures of natural beauty, and happy human life, gathered
+up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the other, like a
+woven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop
+from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts
+along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves
+aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his
+horse plunges, and all its villages nestling themselves into the new
+windings of its glens, and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of
+greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and
+sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying
+quietly, half on the grass, half in the air,--and he will have as yet,
+in all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great
+Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery, becomes lovelier
+in this change; the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the
+level line of plain, assume strange curves of strength and grace as
+they bend themselves against the mountain side; they breathe more
+freely and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher,
+looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother
+tree; the flowers which on the arable plain fall before the plough,
+now find out for themselves unapproachable places where year by year
+they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams
+which in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now
+move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring
+health and life wherever the glance of their waves can reach....
+
+It may not, therefore, be altogether profitless or unnecessary to
+review briefly the nature of the three great offices which mountain
+ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the health and
+increase the happiness of mankind. Their first use is, of course, to
+give motion to water. Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep
+streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the
+massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in
+Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the
+ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt,
+some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary
+before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage;
+and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of
+our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of
+which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water is a
+perpetual sign--that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the earth
+shall find no resting-place; shall find, on the contrary, fixed
+channels traced for them from the ravines of the central crests down
+which they roar, in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath
+the banks of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly
+among the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared
+for them by which, at some appointed rate of journey, they must
+evermore descend, sometimes slow, and sometimes swift, but never
+pausing; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over marked
+for them at each successive sunrise, the place which has known them
+knowing them no more, and the gateways of guarding mountains opened
+for them in cleft and chasm, none letting them in their pilgrimage;
+and, from afar off, the great heart of the sea calling them to itself!
+"Deep calleth unto deep." I know not which of the two is the more
+wonderful,--that calm, gradated, invisible slope of the champaign
+land, which gives motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it
+through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of the land
+immediately around them, would yet, unless so supernaturally divided,
+have fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from far-off
+countries. When did the great spirit of the river first knock at these
+adamantine gates? When did the porter open to it, and cast his keys
+away for ever, lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied--no one
+should be satisfied--with that vague answer, The river cut its way.
+Not so. The river _found_ its way. [22]I do not see that rivers in
+their own strength can do much in cutting their way; they are nearly
+as apt to choke their channels up as to carve them out. Only give a
+river some little sudden power in a valley, and see how it will use
+it. Cut itself a bed? Not so, by any means, but fill up its bed; and
+look for another in a wild, dissatisfied, inconsistent manner,--any
+way rather than the old one will better please it; and even if it is
+banked up and forced to keep to the old one, it will not deepen, but
+do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And although wherever
+water has a steep fall it will swiftly cut itself a bed deep into the
+rock or ground, it will not, when the rock is hard, cut a wider
+channel than it actually needs; so that if the existing river beds,
+through ranges of mountains, had in reality been cut by the streams,
+they would be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in the form of
+narrow and profound ravines, like the well-known channel of the
+Niagara, below the fall; not in that of extended valleys. And the
+actual work of true mountain rivers, though often much greater in
+proportion to their body of water than that of the Niagara, is quite
+insignificant when compared with the area and depth of the valleys
+through which they flow; so that, although in many cases it appears
+that those larger valleys have been excavated at earlier periods by
+more powerful streams, or by the existing stream in a more powerful
+condition, still the great fact remains always equally plain, and
+equally admirable, that, whatever the nature and duration of the
+agencies employed, the earth was so shaped at first as to direct the
+currents of its rivers in the manner most healthy and convenient for
+man. The valley of the Rhone may have been in great part excavated, in
+early times, by torrents a thousand times larger than the Rhone; but
+it could not have been excavated at all, unless the mountains had been
+thrown at first into two chains, by which the torrents were set to
+work in a given direction. And it is easy to conceive how, under any
+less beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents
+of the earth might either have been covered with enormous lakes, as
+parts of North America actually are covered; or have become
+wildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the
+water would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the
+year desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole
+earth is not prepared for the habitation of man; only certain small
+portions are prepared for him,--the houses, as it were, of the human
+race, from which they are to look abroad upon the rest of the world;
+not to wonder or complain that it is not all house, but to be grateful
+for the kindness of the admirable building, in the house itself, as
+compared with the rest. It would be as absurd to think it an evil that
+all the world is not fit for us to inhabit, as to think it an evil
+that the globe is no larger than it is. As much as we shall ever need
+is evidently assigned to us for our dwelling-place; the rest, covered
+with rolling waves or drifting sands, fretted with ice or crested with
+fire, is set before us for contemplation in an uninhabitable
+magnificence. And that part which we are enabled to inhabit owes its
+fitness for human life chiefly to its mountain ranges, which, throwing
+the superfluous rain off as it falls, collect it in streams or lakes,
+and guide it into given places, and in given directions; so that men
+can build their cities in the midst of fields which they know will be
+always fertile, and establish the lines of their commerce upon streams
+which will not fail.
+
+[22] I attach great importance to the remaining contents of this
+passage, and have had occasion to insist on them at great length in
+recent lectures at Oxford.
+
+Nor is this giving of motion to water to be considered as confined
+only to the surface of the earth. A no less important function of the
+hills is in directing the flow of the fountains and springs from
+subterranean reservoirs. There is no miraculous springing up of water
+out of the ground at our feet; but every fountain and well is supplied
+from reservoirs among the hills, so placed as to involve some slight
+fall or pressure enough to secure the constant flowing of the stream;
+and the incalculable blessing of the power given to us, in most
+valleys, of reaching by excavation some point whence the water will
+rise to the surface of the ground in perennial flow, is entirely owing
+to the concave dispositions of the beds of clay or rock raised from
+beneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of enclosing hills.
+
+The second great use of mountains is to maintain a constant change in
+the currents and nature of the _air_. Such change would, of course,
+have been partly caused by difference in soil and vegetation, even if
+the earth had been level; but to a far less extent than it is now by
+the chains of hills which--exposing on one side their masses of rock
+to the full heat of the sun, (increased by the angle at which the rays
+strike on the slope,) and on the other casting a soft shadow for
+leagues over the plains at their feet--divide the earth not only into
+districts, but into climates; and cause perpetual currents of air to
+traverse their passes in a thousand different states; moistening it
+with the spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it
+hither and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it within
+clefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till it is as cold
+as November mists; then sending it forth again to breathe lightly
+across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be scorched among sunburnt
+shales and grassless crags; then drawing it back in moaning swirls
+through clefts of ice, and up into dewy wreaths above the snow-fields;
+then piercing it with strange electric darts and flashes of mountain
+fire, and tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass
+is tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when
+chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off plains.
+
+The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change in the
+_soils_ of the earth. Without such provision the ground under
+cultivation would in a series of years become exhausted, and require
+to be upturned laboriously by the hand of man. But the elevations of
+the earth's surface provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher
+mountains suffer their summits to be broken into fragments, and to be
+cast down in sheets of massy rock, full, as we shall see presently, of
+every substance necessary for the nourishment of plants; these fallen
+fragments are again broken by frost, and ground by torrents, into
+various conditions of sand and clay--materials which are distributed
+perpetually by the streams farther and farther from the mountain's
+base. Every shower that swells the rivulet enables their waters to
+carry certain portions of earth into new positions, and exposes new
+banks of ground to be mined in their turn. That turbid foaming of the
+angry water,--that tearing down of bank and rock along the flanks of
+its fury,--are no disturbances of the kind course of nature; they are
+beneficent operations of laws necessary to the existence of man, and
+to the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more gently, but
+not less effectively, over all the surface of the lower undulating
+country; and each filtering thread of summer rain which trickles
+through the short turf of the uplands is bearing its own appointed
+burden of earth to be thrown down on some new natural garden in the
+dingles beneath.
+
+I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mountains. I
+do not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams from the
+moors of the higher ranges,--of the various medicinal plants which are
+nested among their rocks,--of the delicate pasturage which they
+furnish for cattle,--of the forests in which they bear timber for
+shipping,--the stones they supply for building, or the ores of metal
+which they collect into spots open to discovery, and easy for working.
+All these benefits are of a secondary or a limited nature. But the
+three great functions which I have just described, those of giving
+motion and change to water, air, and earth, are indispensable to human
+existence; they are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of
+gratitude as the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed
+multiply itself in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening
+ranges of dark mountain, which in nearly all ages of the world men
+have looked upon with aversion, or with terror, and shrunk back from
+as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are in reality
+sources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than all
+the bright fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed; the
+mountains feed, and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of
+fearlessness and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea;
+but we associate them unjustly. The sea-wave, with all its
+beneficence, is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the
+blue mountain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual
+mercy; and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other
+unshaken in its faithfulness, for ever bear the seal of their
+appointed symbolism:--
+
+"Thy _righteousness_ is like the great mountains;
+
+"Thy _judgments_ are a great deep."
+
+
+33. Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent
+muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its
+anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive
+energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the
+lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame,
+when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its
+beauty,--yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. This then
+is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit of
+the hills is action, that of the lowlands repose; and between these
+there is to be found every variety of motion and rest, from the
+inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to
+the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with
+the clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up
+their Titan heads to Heaven, saying, "I live for ever."
+
+
+34. Where they are,[23] they seem to form the world; no mere bank of a
+river here, or of a lane there, peeping out among the hedges or
+forests, but from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is
+theirs,--one adamantine dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield
+ourselves to the impression of their eternal unconquerable
+stubbornness of strength; their mass seems the least yielding, least
+to be softened, or in anywise dealt with by external force, of all
+earthly substance. And behold, as we look further into it, it is all
+touched and troubled, like waves by a summer breeze; rippled far more
+delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; _they_ only undulate along
+their surfaces--this rock trembles through its every fibre, like the
+chords of an Eolian harp, like the stillest air of spring, with the
+echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great
+mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep
+beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering
+of their substance. Other and weaker things seem to express their
+subjection to an Infinite Power only by momentary terrors: as the
+weeds bow down before the feverish wind, and the sound of the going in
+the tops of the taller trees passes on before the clouds, and the
+fitful opening of pale spaces on the dark water, as if some invisible
+hand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives warning of the anger that
+is to come, we may well imagine that there is a fear passing upon the
+grass, and leaves, and waters, at the presence of some great spirit
+commissioned to let the tempest loose; but the terror passes, and
+their sweet rest is perpetually restored to the pastures and the
+waves. Not so to the mountains. They, which at first seem strengthened
+beyond the dread of any violence or change, are yet also ordained to
+bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual fear. The tremor which fades
+from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed to all eternity upon
+the rock; and while things that pass visibly from birth to death may
+sometimes forget their feebleness, the mountains are made to possess a
+perpetual memorial of their infancy--that infancy which the prophet
+saw in his vision,[24]--"I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without
+form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the
+mountains, and lo, they _trembled_, and all the hills moved
+_lightly_."
+
+[23] Passage written after I had got by some years cooler and wiser than
+when I wrote No. 33, describing however the undulation of the gneiss
+rocks, which, 'where they are, seem, to form the world,' in terms more
+fanciful than I now like.
+
+[24] Utter misinterpretation of the passage. It is the old age, not the
+childhood of earth, which Jeremiah describes in this passage. See its
+true interpretation in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XLVI.
+
+
+35. The longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I
+examined them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of there
+being a vast Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon which
+nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table,
+removed, in most cases, far back from the edge of the plateau,--as if
+for fear of their falling; while the most majestic scenes in the Alps
+are produced, not so much by any violation of this law, as by one of
+the great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to
+look over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the valley in its
+full height. This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at
+Grindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse above the Col de Ferret. But
+the raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in
+these apparently exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great
+peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain like the
+keeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by
+comparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets
+of glacier writhe and flow, foaming about the feet of the dark central
+crests like the surf of an enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded
+rock, and islanding some fragment of it in the midst. And the result
+of this arrangement is a kind of division of the whole of Switzerland
+into an upper and lower mountain world,--the lower world consisting of
+rich valleys, bordered by steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks
+of mountain, more or less divided by ravines, through which glimpses
+are caught of the higher Alps; the upper world, reached after the
+first banks of 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height have been surmounted,
+consisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts of moor and
+rock, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true
+pinnacles of the chain. It can hardly be necessary to point out the
+perfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for
+the safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the
+great peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which
+was struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped
+from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground,
+over which no year would pass without recording some calamity of
+earth-slip or avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the
+stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving
+only naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping
+meadow and the chestnut glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast
+down at once into the warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the
+spring, causing furious inundation of every great river for a month or
+six weeks. The snow being then all thawed, except what lay upon the
+highest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would
+be supplied during the summer only by fountains, and the feeble
+tricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone, under such
+circumstances, would hardly be larger, in summer, than the Severn, and
+many Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All these
+calamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has
+been described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high
+peaks, instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon
+the desolate shelves, or shoulders, which everywhere surround the
+central crests. The soft banks which terminate these shelves,
+traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest
+wood, while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a
+climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so
+cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either
+form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even
+to the close of the year,--in either case supplying constant,
+abundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath,
+and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.
+
+Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,[25] is
+indeed sufficient reason for its existence, and to many people it may
+seem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can
+hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers
+of central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the
+actual first work of the Divine Master, on which I gaze? Was the great
+precipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust?
+Were its clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the
+letters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear
+its eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of Heaven?
+Or is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under
+appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There
+can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by
+the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is _not_ as
+it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the
+wrecks of what it was. On these perhaps, of all mountains, the
+characters of decay are written most clearly; around these are spread
+most gloomily the memorials of their pride, and the signs of their
+humiliation.
+
+[25] Of course I had seen every other tried before giving this
+favourable judgment.
+
+What then were they once? The only answer is yet again--"Behold the
+cloud!"
+
+
+36. There are many spots among the inferior ridges of the Alps, such
+as the Col de Ferret, the Col d'Anterne, and the associated ranges of
+the Buet, which, though commanding prospects of great nobleness, are
+themselves very nearly types of all that is most painful to the human
+mind. Vast wastes of mountain ground,[26] covered here and there with
+dull grey grass or moss, but breaking continually into black banks of
+shattered slate, all glistening and sodden with slow tricklings of
+clogged, incapable streams; the snow-water oozing through them in a
+cold sweat, and spreading itself in creeping stains among their dust;
+ever and anon a shaking here and there, and a handful or two of their
+particles or flakes trembling down, one sees not why, into more total
+dissolution, leaving a few jagged teeth, like the edges of knives
+eaten away by vinegar, projecting, through the half-dislodged mass,
+from the inner rock; keen enough to cut the hand or foot that rests on
+them, yet crumbling as they wound, and soon sinking again into the
+smooth, slippery, glutinous heap; looking like a beach of black scales
+of dead fish cast ashore from a poisonous sea, and sloping away into
+foul ravines, branched down immeasurable slopes of barrenness, where
+the winds howl and wander continually, and the snow lies in wasted and
+sorrowful fields covered with sooty dust, that collects in streaks and
+stains at the bottom of all its thawing ripples.
+
+[26] This is a fourth volume passage,--and I will venture to say of it,
+as Albert Dürer, when he was pleased with his work--that for what it has
+to do, it cannot be much better done. It is a study on the Col de Bon
+Homme.
+
+I know of no other scenes so appalling as these in storm, or so woful
+in sunshine. Where, however, these same rocks exist in more favourable
+positions--that is to say, in gentler banks and at lower
+elevations--they form a ground for the most luxuriant vegetation; and
+the valleys of Savoy owe to them some of their loveliest
+solitudes--exquisitely rich pastures, interspersed with arable and
+orchard land, and shaded by groves of walnut and cherry. Scenes of
+this kind, and of that just described, so singularly opposed, and
+apparently brought together as foils to each other, are however
+peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which are both vast
+in elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland the same
+groups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain less
+elevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery.
+The severity of the climate, and the comparative durableness of the
+rock, forbid the rich vegetation; but the exposed summits, though
+barren, are not subject to laws of destruction so rapid and fearful as
+in Switzerland, and the natural colour of the rock is oftener
+developed in the purples and greys which, mingled with the heather,
+form the principal elements of the deep and beautiful distant blue of
+the British hills. Their gentler mountain streams also permit the beds
+of rock to remain in firm, though fantastic, forms along their banks,
+and the gradual action of the cascades and eddies upon the slaty
+cleavage produces many pieces of foreground scenery to which higher
+hills can present no parallel.
+
+
+37. Unlike Chamouni Aiguilles, there is no aspect of destruction about
+the Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating
+spires, yielding, flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual
+process of decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument,
+seemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls retaining yet the forms
+into which they were first engraven, and standing like an Egyptian
+temple;--delicately fronted, softly coloured, the suns of uncounted
+ages rising and falling upon it continually, but still casting the
+same line of shadows from east to west; still, century after century,
+touching the same purple stains on the lotus pillars; while the desert
+sand ebbs and flows about their feet, as those autumn leaves of rock
+lie heaped and weak about the base of the Cervin.
+
+Is not this a strange type in the very heart and height of these
+mysterious Alps--these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold,
+grey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at
+their feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously in broken and
+dreaming fits, as it were, about their childhood,--is it not a strange
+type of the things which "out of weakness are made strong"? If one of
+these little flakes of mica sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along
+the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to
+float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it
+as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of
+the stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless
+eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble
+of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down
+there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to
+build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it
+have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength
+as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame,
+out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should
+hew that Alpine tower?--that against _it_--poor, helpless mica
+flake!--the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath
+_it_--low-fallen mica flake!--the snowy hills should lie bowed like
+flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded
+blue; and around _it_--weak, wave-drifted mica flake!--the great war
+of the firmament should burst in thunder and yet stir it not; and the
+fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it
+into the air; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one
+by one as they rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed
+its abiding-place on the imperishable spire?
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.
+
+
+38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than
+out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a
+patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to
+some extent without patience, and are pleasant even in being half
+seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless;
+but the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but
+stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor
+good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the
+unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and
+watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any
+other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is
+examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of
+Nature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in
+diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a
+small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking
+moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a
+stone in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than
+the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and
+incomparably richer in colour.
+
+
+39. On a Highland hillside are multitudinous clusters of fern and
+heather; on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine.
+The number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is
+in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler
+things. Indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the
+field of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten
+feet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just
+as much of the sky as that bank of mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in
+many respects, its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some
+help of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us
+of those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn
+mountain ground under the general and humble term of Banks, I mean to
+imply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences
+and the highest. But in this matter of superimposed _quantity_, the
+distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of earth bears its
+few tufts of moss, or knots of grass; the Highland or Cumberland
+mountain, its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the
+bank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its
+rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.... The minute
+mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory,
+when they are actually approached after three or four hours' climbing,
+turn into independent hills, with true _parks_ of lovely pasture-land
+enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts,
+and pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles,
+populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks
+of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have
+in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village,
+and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward
+coils as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net
+of the Flatterer.
+
+
+40. When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the
+weather, Nature finishes it in her own way. First she takes wonderful
+pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dent
+and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours which for
+fineness no human hand can follow; then she colours it; and every one
+of her touches of colour, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is
+a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and
+concealing wonders of structure.
+
+
+41. On the broken rocks in the foreground in the crystalline groups,
+the mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the
+task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of colour in their
+power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather
+over it in little brown bosses, like small cushions of velvet, made of
+mixed threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded over more subdued
+films of white and grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like
+hoar frost on fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange
+stalks with pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and
+faint purple passing into black, all woven together, and following
+with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of the
+stone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so that it can
+receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, or
+anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed
+with a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque of purple
+and silver.
+
+
+42. The colour of the white varieties of marble is of exquisite
+delicacy, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock; and it
+has always appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance--one of the most
+_marked_ pieces of purpose in the creation--that all the variegated
+kinds should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on
+the surface, while the white, which, if it had been opaque, would have
+looked somewhat coarse, (as for instance common chalk does,) is
+rendered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme
+purity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the
+distinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colours of
+variegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful,
+especially those composed of purple, amber, and green, with white; and
+there seems something notably attractive to the human mind in the
+_vague_ and veined labyrinths of their arrangements.
+
+
+43. I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of
+brilliancy of colour with vigour of life or purity of substance. This
+is pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with
+which the particles of any substance unite in crystallization,
+corresponds in that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature; and
+it is a universal law, that according to the purity of any substance,
+and according to the energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or
+brightness. Pure earths are white when in powder; and the same earths,
+which are the constituents of clay and sand, form, when crystallized,
+the emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and opal.
+
+
+44. As we pass between the hills which have been shaken by earthquake
+and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed
+those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their
+fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among
+their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and
+its church tower, white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed
+appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the
+earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no
+loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is
+just where "the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
+removed out of his place," that in process of years the fairest
+meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from
+between their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages,
+each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed
+no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the
+eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in
+simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient
+promise,--"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction, when it
+cometh; for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and
+the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND FLOWERS.
+
+
+45. Wonderful, in universal adaptation to man's need, desire, and
+discipline, God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with
+beautiful means of life. First, a carpet, to make it soft for him;
+then a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of
+foliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain,
+that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish
+the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to
+be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments
+(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it
+had been if harder; useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic.
+Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm
+the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter
+winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according
+to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude
+of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold
+juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil,
+preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm;
+and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or
+force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring
+uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble
+tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
+the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of
+summer streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the
+transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or
+hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in
+entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with
+variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or
+ministering, at cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest
+joy of humanity.
+
+
+46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift
+by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty
+monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the
+avenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so
+eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the
+glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves
+that flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our
+understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless
+of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which
+men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.
+
+
+47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other
+trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground,
+clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its
+flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene
+resistance, self-contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under
+a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to
+its companies of pines, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and
+perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like
+the shadow of the one beside it--upright, fixed, spectral, as troops
+of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb
+for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them: those trees never
+heard human voice; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No
+foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs: all comfortless they stand,
+between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock; yet with such
+iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside
+them,--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of
+delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride--unnumbered,
+unconquerable.
+
+Then note farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's
+minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far
+as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief
+character in health is green and full _roundness_. It stands compact,
+like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and
+quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of
+being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for
+other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine,
+growing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no
+branch to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or
+down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there
+is nothing but green cone, and green carpet. Nor is it only softer,
+but in one sense more cheerful than other foliage, for it casts only a
+pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the
+ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in scattered groups,
+leaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own;
+narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew.
+And if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine
+glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but it is
+only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our
+English meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest pine-glade
+in Chamouni, "Fairies' Hollow." It is in the glen beneath the steep
+ascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding
+path which goes down from the top of the hill[27]--being indeed not
+truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a
+formidable precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over
+the Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory, many coloured, rises at
+the end of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which
+a little cascade falls, literally, down among the pines, for it is so
+light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that
+the pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without
+minding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence; and above, for
+ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.
+
+[27] The new road to Chamouni has been carried right through it. A
+cascade on the right, as you ascend, marks the place spoken of in the
+text,--once as lonely as Corrie-nan-shian.
+
+Other trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this, in
+fringes. You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for
+this reason,--it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the
+fiery change which has been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises
+behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance
+of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about three or
+four degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in
+clear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I
+thought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves;
+but I believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them--every
+minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living
+always among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and
+themselves, the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendour to the
+sun itself.
+
+
+48. The Swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in
+anywise correspondent with ours. It was rather as fortresses of
+defence, than as spectacles of splendour, that the cliffs of the
+Rothslock bare rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their
+feet; and the training for which the mountain children had to thank
+the slopes of the Muotta-Thal, was in soundness of breath, and
+steadiness of limb, far more than in elevation of idea. But the point
+which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene
+which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is
+not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was
+not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though
+these were all peculiarly their possessions--that the three venerable
+cantons received their name. They were not called the States of the
+Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the _Forest_. And
+the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the
+spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the
+'Hill of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name
+of 'Under the Woods.'
+
+And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in
+Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman
+row southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest
+there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.
+Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the
+lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable
+falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices
+of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time the beat
+of a wave, slow lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies
+heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep
+grass, and set with châlet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn
+glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of
+twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the
+shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.
+
+
+49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the
+Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of
+thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian
+aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of
+Chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm
+swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of
+Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure
+streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing
+through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure,
+half æther and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky
+slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,
+whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
+evergreens, were penetrated with it, as with rain. I cannot call it
+colour,--it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like
+the curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
+valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
+and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit the
+sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses
+of the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves
+of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their
+banks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air
+around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand
+separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind
+lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden
+floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and
+closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the
+motionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet
+lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the
+fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and
+fitful sound; and, over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and
+rose--the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to
+illumine--were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and
+orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the
+last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the
+Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
+
+
+50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity:
+children love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as
+they grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered;
+they are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as
+with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers
+in whose hearts rests the covenant of peace.
+
+
+51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond
+of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares
+about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in
+the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are
+scientifically interested in them, though even these in the
+nomenclature, rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their
+gardens.... But, the blossoming time of the year being principally
+spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that
+period, to stay in towns. A year or two ago a keen-sighted and
+eccentrically-minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to
+violate this national custom, and go to the Tyrol in spring, was
+passing through a valley near Landech with several similarly
+headstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the distance,
+belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English Queen.
+Was it a blue cloud, a blue horizontal bar of the air that Titian
+breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe
+again? Was it a mirage--a meteor? Would it stay to be
+approached?--(ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot
+of the mountain)--such questioning had they concerning it. My
+keen-sighted friend, alone, maintained it to be substantial;--whatever
+it might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of
+road were overpast, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed
+patiently, expanding still into richer breath and heavenlier glow--a
+belt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in
+spring, and in spring only; which being so, I observe most people
+prefer going in autumn.
+
+
+52. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a
+rose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will
+find, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the
+loveliest of all pure colours; and, secondly, that in the rose there
+is _no shadow_, except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are
+fuller in colour than its lights, owing to the translucency and
+reflective power of the leaves.
+
+
+53. Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of
+volatile substance? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a
+rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the
+air continually!
+
+
+54. In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be
+found more perfectly beautiful, than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen
+under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and
+changefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light
+and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish,--the shadows
+sharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and
+multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted
+light.... If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it upon the lower
+Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or
+three little round openings pierced in it; and through these,
+emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower,[28] whose small, dark,
+purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it
+has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly
+dying of very fatigue after its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we
+ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness
+from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds:
+there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an
+image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or
+senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be
+heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of
+us whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is clearly and surely
+sighted.
+
+[28] Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which
+actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed
+hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or
+two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its
+fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.
+
+
+55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found
+alone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such
+soil is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of
+existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its
+inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this
+position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth and
+maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing
+from it, at the same time, all rivals, which in such conditions Nature
+would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently
+developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in
+organization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which
+is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It
+was intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely
+spots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed
+with courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character
+and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its
+own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly
+destroyed and rooted out for its good alone; but in its right doing of
+its hard duty, and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope
+where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the
+Spirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as He covers the
+valleys with corn; and there, in its vanward place, and only there,
+where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing
+can take part of its honour, nor usurp its throne, are its strength
+and fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of God to be truly
+esteemed. The first time I saw the Soldanella Alpina, before spoken
+of, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny Alpine pasture,
+among bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated with a
+profusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenæus. I noticed it only
+because new to me--nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven
+flower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the
+higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds; and, as I described it,
+piercing through an edge of avalanche which in its retiring had left
+the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burnt by recent fire. The
+plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its
+efforts,--but it was then that I comprehended its ideal character, and
+saw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of
+the earth.
+
+
+56. GRASSES.--Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels,
+mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain,
+with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness
+and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious
+evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but
+with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of
+grainbells, all a-chime.
+
+
+57. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly
+its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems,
+there of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very
+little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a
+point,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no
+means a creditable or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's
+workmanship, made, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be
+cast into the oven,--and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
+flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
+think of it well, and judge whether, of all the gorgeous flowers that
+beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
+the eyes, or good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
+oak, scented citron, burdened vine--there be any by man so deeply
+loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green.
+And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to
+the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious
+enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful
+spears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the thoughts of
+all that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and summer
+is in them--the walks by silent, scented paths--the rests in noonday
+heat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life
+and meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world falling in
+emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would
+have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside
+the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes
+of down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all
+dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine,
+dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving
+voices,--all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not
+all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in
+our own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of
+that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us
+more and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime
+among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the
+roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
+gentians, and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
+as you follow the winding mountain path, beneath arching boughs, all
+veiled with blossom--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green
+banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue
+water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps filling all the air
+with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the
+waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among
+the shadows of the pines; and we may perhaps at last know the meaning
+of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon
+the mountains."
+
+Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all,
+from Isaiah xl. 6, we find the grass and flowers are types, in their
+passing, of the passing of human life, and in their excellence, of the
+excellence of human life; and this in twofold way: first by their
+beneficence, and then by their endurance--the grass of the earth, in
+giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and
+stroke of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness
+for our rest, and in its bending before the wave. But, understood in
+the broad human and Divine sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed"--(as
+opposed to the fruit tree yielding fruit)--includes a third family of
+plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the
+great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_
+offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment;
+consider the association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery
+with the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and
+consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet
+thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues
+definitely set forth by the three families of plants--not arbitrarily
+or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
+for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in
+the grass for food and beauty--"Consider the lilies of the field, how
+they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." 2nd. Humility; in the
+grass for rest--"A bruised reed shall he not break." 3rd. Love; in the
+grass for clothing, (because of its swift kindling,)--"The smoking
+flax shall he not quench." And then finally observe the confirmation
+of these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy,
+relating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in
+the Old Testament, namely that contained in the closing chapters of
+Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and
+because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever
+can be taken, the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a
+measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of
+the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
+the church, or its labours, are to be measured by humility; and its
+territory, or land, by love.
+
+
+58. LEAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak
+grasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth
+with a peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock,
+moveless as they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low
+rays of morning.
+
+
+59. MOSSES.--Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling
+with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity,
+covering with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin,
+laying quiet finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No
+words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are
+delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to
+tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green,--the starred
+divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could
+spin porphyry as we do glass,--the traceries of intricate silver, and
+fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre
+into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all
+subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of
+grace? They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet, or
+love-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the
+wearied child his pillow.
+
+And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when
+all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and
+gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the
+blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time;
+but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers
+for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.
+
+
+60. LICHENS.--As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the
+most honoured of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm
+frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they
+neither blanch in heat, nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered,
+constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal
+tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the
+tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the
+unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds
+of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted
+snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its
+cowslip gold,--far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots
+rest, star-like, on the stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon
+the edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand
+years.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+EDUCATION.
+
+
+61. The most helpful and sacred work which can at present be done for
+humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching
+must be done) not how "to better themselves," but how to "satisfy
+themselves." It is the curse of every evil nature and evil creature to
+eat and _not_ be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall
+eat and be satisfied; and as there is only one kind of water which
+quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which
+satisfies all hunger--the bread of justice or righteousness; which
+hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of
+Heaven; but hungering after the bread or wages of unrighteousness,
+shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And in order to
+teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the
+art of joy and humble life--this, at present, of all arts or sciences,
+being the one most needing study. Humble life; that is to say,
+proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet
+continuance: not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of
+fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so also
+not excluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of
+accumulation;--the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full
+of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind
+pleasure;--therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.
+
+
+62. We shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed,
+has been a faithful and sacred element of feeling; that is to say,
+supposing all the circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two
+individuals, the one who loves nature most will be always found to
+have more capacity for _faith_ in God than the other. Nature-worship
+will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power
+of a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or
+controvert; and where that nature-worship is innocently
+pursued--_i.e._, with due respect to other claims on time, feeling,
+and exertion, and associated with the higher principles of
+religion,--it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which by
+no other means can be conveyed.
+
+
+63. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with
+the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected properly with
+the benevolence and liberty[29] of the age; that it is precisely the
+most healthy element which distinctively belongs to us; and that out
+of it, cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness
+and as a duty, results will spring of an importance at present
+inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's
+history, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true
+field for his energies, and the true relations between him and his
+Maker.
+
+[29] I forget, now, what I meant by 'liberty' in this passage; but I
+often used the word in my first writings, in a good sense, thinking of
+Scott's moorland rambles and the like. It is very wonderful to me, now,
+to see what hopes I had once: but Turner was alive, then; and the sun
+used to shine, and rivers to sparkle.
+
+
+64. To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk, over
+not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing
+of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion
+to its rapidity.
+
+Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely
+"being sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a
+parcel.
+
+
+65. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of
+the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavouring, however
+clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily exert in
+amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for
+instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over
+other people's.
+
+
+66. In order to define what is fairest, you must delight in what is
+fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such
+delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking
+to be understood; now I cannot, any more, for it seems to me that no
+one regards them. Wherever I look or travel, in England or abroad, I
+see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem
+to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses, and be able
+to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they
+defile. Thus the railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen, and
+that round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the
+power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the
+place, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.
+
+
+67. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being
+taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. The
+intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the
+hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag into the dark lake, has
+associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever
+since. Two other things I remember as, in a sort, beginnings of
+life;--crossing Shap-fells, being let out of the chaise to run up the
+hills; and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, on a winter's
+morning, when the rocks were hung with icicles; these being
+culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually
+indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me
+near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,
+as early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or
+twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to
+me in anything.
+
+
+68. A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to
+lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and time; a wise man, first
+to gain them, then to animate them.
+
+
+69. I suspect that system-makers in general are not of much more use,
+each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie
+cherries upon sticks, for the more portableness of the same. To
+cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance;
+but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their
+crabbed stalks, it is a better connection for them than any others;
+and if they cannot, then so that they be not bruised, it makes to a
+boy of practical disposition not much difference whether he gets them
+by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick.
+
+
+70. Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift
+is to get good out of all things and all persons.
+
+
+71. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and
+if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and
+faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all
+cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such
+burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men,
+and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there
+must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly
+trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a
+gift also to his race for ever.
+
+
+72. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it
+is capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that
+unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the
+beholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the unity of
+spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and
+taking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and
+their strength; for their strength is in their co-working and army
+fellowship, and their delight is in their giving and receiving of
+alternate and perpetual good; their inseparable dependency on each
+other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their
+Creator's. And so the unity of earthly creatures is their power, and
+their peace; not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones
+and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and the living
+power of support; of hands that hold each other and are still.[30]
+
+[30] A long, affected, and obscure second volume sentence, written in
+imitation of Hooker. One short sentence from Ecclesiastes is the sum of
+it: "How can one be warm alone?"
+
+
+73. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis
+of Assisi, who spoke never to bird, nor to cicada, nor even to wolf
+and beasts of prey, but as his brother;--and so we find are moved the
+minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from
+the 'Mariner' of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in
+the 'Hartleap Well'--
+
+  "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
+  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"--
+
+and again in the 'White Doe' of Rylstone, with the added teaching,
+that anguish of our own
+
+  "Is tempered and allayed by sympathies
+  Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
+  Even to the inferior kinds;"--
+
+so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic
+faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect,[31]
+than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself cat, tiger,
+leopard, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of
+cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes sparingly and
+at intervals use against each other for their necessities.
+
+[31] I am more and more grieved, as I re-read this and other portions of
+the most affected and weak of all my books, (written in a moulting time
+of my life,)--the second volume of 'Modern Painters,'--at its morbid
+violence of passion and narrowness of thought. Yet, at heart, the book
+was, like my others, honest; and in substance it is mostly good; but all
+boiled to rags.
+
+
+74. He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass
+beneath his feet, nor the creatures which live not for his uses,
+filling those spaces in the universe which he needs not: while, on the
+other hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving
+all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them every
+one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than
+he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched
+more truly.[32]
+
+[32] Morbidly Franciscan, again! and I am really compelled to leave out
+one little bit my friend liked,--as all kindly and hopeful women
+would,--about everything turning out right, and being to some good end.
+For we have no business whatever with the ends of things, but with their
+beings; and their beings are often entirely bad.
+
+
+75. Things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never
+_completely_. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but
+we may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every individual
+temper will see something different in it; but supposing the tempers
+honest, all the differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness
+of perception will show us something new; but the old and
+first-discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only
+modified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually
+more beautiful in its harmony with them, and more approved as a part
+of the infinite truth.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+MORALITIES.
+
+
+76. When people read, "The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by
+Christ," do they suppose it means that the law was ungracious and
+untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and
+truth for fulfilment;--the whole forming one glorious Trinity of
+judgment, mercy, and truth.[33] And if people would but read the text
+of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of
+superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they
+are intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is
+always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms
+respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost;
+but those respecting the Law are always full of delight. David cannot
+contain himself for joy in thinking of it,--he is never weary of its
+praise: "How love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thy
+testimonies are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter also than honey
+and the honeycomb."
+
+[33] A great deal of the presumption and narrowness caused by my having
+been bred in the Evangelical schools, and which now fill me with shame
+and distress in re-reading 'Modern Painters,' is, to my present mind,
+atoned for by the accurate thinking by which I broke my way through to
+the great truth expressed in this passage, which all my later writings,
+without exception, have been directed to maintain and illustrate.
+
+
+77. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which,
+in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know
+the close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling
+upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing
+Himself to His disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something
+pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this
+manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were
+sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied
+agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.
+But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily
+work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the
+literal rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing.
+They say unto him, We also go with thee." True words enough, and
+having far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught
+nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold!
+a figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but
+their fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them
+simply if they had caught anything. They say, No, and it tells them to
+cast again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his
+hand to look who it is; and though the glistening of the sea, too,
+dazzles him, he makes out who it is at last; and poor Simon, not to be
+outrun this time, tightens his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in
+over the nets. One would have liked to see him swim those hundred
+yards, and stagger to his knees upon the beach.
+
+Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as
+men in general do get in this world to its true shore, much impeded by
+that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes"; but they get
+there--seven of them in all; first the Denier, and then the slowest
+believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two
+throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.
+
+They sit down on the shore, face to face with Him, and eat their
+broiled fish as He bids. And then to Peter, all dripping still,
+shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side
+of the coal-fire,--thinking a little perhaps of what happened by
+another coal-fire, when it was colder, and having had no word changed
+with him by his Master, since that look of His,--to him so amazed,
+comes the question, "Simon, lovest thou Me?" Try to feel that a
+little; and think of it till it is true to you: and then take up that
+infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy,--Raphael's cartoon of the charge
+to Peter. Note first the bold fallacy--the putting _all_ the Apostles
+there, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy,
+by putting them all in the background while Peter receives the charge,
+and making them all witnesses to it. Note the handsomely curled hair
+and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the
+sea-mists, and on the slimy decks; note their convenient dresses for
+going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and
+goodly fringes--all made to match;--an apostolic fishing costume. Note
+how Peter especially, (whose chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_
+about him, and naked limbs,) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as
+to kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor
+lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of
+villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the
+whole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would have been
+naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may be shown. The
+simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our
+belief of the whole thing taken away. There is visibly no possibility
+of that group even having existed, in any place, or on any occasion.
+It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes,
+muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.
+
+
+78. Among the children of God, there is always that fearful and bowed
+apprehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to
+Him which is called the Fear of God; yet of real and essential fear
+there is not any, but clinging of confidence to Him as their Rock,
+Fortress, and Deliverer; and perfect love, and casting out of fear; so
+that it is not possible that, while the mind is rightly bent on Him,
+there should be dread of anything earthly or supernatural; and the
+more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less fear they feel
+that dwell in the shadow of it. "Of whom shall I be afraid?"
+
+
+79. If for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a
+claim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God's demands from
+them, we could substitute a display of His kindness to them; if side
+by side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and
+promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of
+an awful Deity, which men, though they cannot, and dare not deny, are
+always unwilling, sometimes unable to conceive, we were to show them a
+near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent Deity, whose presence
+makes the earth itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf
+children sitting in the market-place.
+
+
+80. If not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with
+what divine lines and light the exercise of godliness and charity will
+mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what
+darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not
+any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a
+new fairness upon the features.
+
+
+81. The love of the human race is increased by their individual
+differences, and the unity of the creature, made perfect by each
+having something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a
+thousand various necessities and various gratitudes; humility in each
+rejoicing to admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself,
+and each being in some respect the complement of his race.
+
+
+82. They who are as the angels of God in heaven, yet cannot be
+conceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and
+affections upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the
+child, taken early to his place, cannot be imagined to wear there such
+a body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who had
+finished his course and kept the faith on earth. And so, whatever
+perfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the tried
+or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in
+glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of
+occupying till their Lord come; different dispensations of trial and
+of trust, of sorrows and support, both in their own inward, variable
+hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace; of the gourd
+shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day, or eleventh
+hour, of the house unroofed by faith, or the clouds opened by
+revelation; differences in warning, in mercies, in sickness, in signs,
+in time of calling to account; alike only they all are by that which
+is not of them, but the gift of God's unchangeable mercy: "I will give
+unto this last even as unto thee."
+
+
+83. The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual, no unworthy
+one; but a longing for renovation, and for escape from a state whose
+every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one
+in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection.
+Hence the great call of Christ to men, that call on which St.
+Augustine fixed as the essential expression of Christian hope, is
+accompanied by the promise of rest; and the death bequest of Christ to
+men, is peace.
+
+
+84. He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the
+companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent,
+there, are the wild love, and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's
+pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the
+departed spirit, for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the
+future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to
+the dust. But the lessons which men receive as individuals, they do
+not learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest
+descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the
+tombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honour to
+the ashes, which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease
+them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their
+busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps,
+which God has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that they
+may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by
+their decay.
+
+
+85. In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north
+transept, there is a monument by Jacopo della Quercia to Ilaria di
+Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more beautiful or
+perfect than other examples of the same period; but as furnishing an
+instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness
+of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life,
+sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.
+She is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet; not on the
+side, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow,
+in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive
+imitation of pressure.--It is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken
+for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the
+sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is
+set and quiet; there is that about them which forbids breath;
+something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both.
+The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are
+laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. The
+feet are hidden by the drapery, and the form of the limbs concealed,
+but not their tenderness.
+
+
+86. I do not know any district possessing a more pure or uninterrupted
+fulness of mountain character, (and that of the highest order,) or
+which appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than
+that which borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and
+Martigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone,
+rising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding
+stairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders
+of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an
+industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks,
+smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the
+backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring of
+the tufts of moss and roots of herb, which little by little gather a
+feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow slip
+of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade; and
+in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky
+casque. The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among
+these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets that seem
+always to have chosen the steepest places to come down for the sake of
+the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that, as
+the wind takes them with all the grace, but with none of the
+formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and
+spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the
+lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and
+closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten
+with silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of
+sable stone; until at last, gathered altogether again,--except perhaps
+some chance drops caught on the apple blossom, where it has budded a
+little nearer the cascade than it did last spring,--they find their
+way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with
+quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass-blades, and
+looking only like their shadows but presently emerging again in little
+startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered
+suddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill.
+Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope
+together in the sunshine towards the brows of ravines, where the pines
+take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting
+roar, in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down, pale from
+the glaciers, filling all the chasms with enchanted cold, beating
+themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves
+cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. The
+mountain paths stoop to those glens in forky zigzags, leading to some
+grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the
+ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to
+its parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up
+the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the
+openings in the pines thin with excess of light; and, in its clear
+consuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are
+gathered into solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange
+faint silence of possession by the sunshine, which has in it so deep a
+melancholy, full of power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the
+walls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds,
+like the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam
+flashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength,
+lifted above all sorrows, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the
+air by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two
+golden clouds.
+
+High above all sorrow? Yes; but not unwitnessing to it. The traveller
+on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf, and
+strikes the pebbles gaily over the edge of the mountain road, sees
+with a glance of delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that
+nestle along those sloping orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of
+the pines. Here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes
+hardship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship
+of the human soul with nature. It is not so. The wild goats that leap
+along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of
+God as the men that toil among them,--perhaps more. Enter the street
+of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy
+foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here,
+it is torpor--not absolute suffering--not starvation or disease; but
+darkness of calm enduring: the spring, known only as the time of the
+scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as
+a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. They do
+not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They
+understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality,
+faith--these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so
+happier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank
+unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to
+see at the foot of their low death-beds a pale figure upon a cross,
+dying, also patiently;--in this they are different from the cattle and
+from the stones; but, in all this, unrewarded, as far as concerns the
+present life. For them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit;
+for them, neither advance nor exultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark
+night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life ebbs away. No
+books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest,--except only sometimes a
+little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls
+thin and far in the mountain air; a pattering of a few prayers, not
+understood, by the altar-rails of the dimly gilded chapel,--and so,
+back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken--that
+cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous
+stones, and unlightened even in their religion, except by the vague
+promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and
+obscured by an unspeakable horror--a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom,
+coiling up with the incense; and amidst the images of tortured bodies
+and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them,
+dashed more deeply than for others with gouts of blood.
+
+
+87. A Highland scene is beyond doubt pleasant enough in its own way;
+but, looked close at, has its shadows.[34] Here, for instance, is the
+very fact of one--as pretty as I can remember,--having seen many. It
+is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by
+jutting rocks, and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it
+to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into
+quicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then,
+first islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes
+away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash and
+alder. The autumn sun, low, but clear, shines on the scarlet
+ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and
+there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies
+of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket,
+the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to
+the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and
+the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first
+stayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current
+plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on
+three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which
+the foam slips in detached snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool
+beneath, the water circles slowly like black oil; a little butterfly
+lies on its back, the wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs
+feebly quivering; a fish arises, and it is gone. Lower down the
+stream, I can see over a knoll the green and damp turf roofs of four
+or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the
+cattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by
+a few ill-set stepping stones, with here and there a flat slab on the
+tops, where they have sunk out of sight;--and at the turn of the brook
+I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog--a picturesque and pretty
+group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I
+know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as
+the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old
+tartan jacket through, so sharp are they.
+
+[34] Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an
+amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the
+Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of
+Italy.
+
+
+88. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the
+solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the
+reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and
+motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and
+wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he
+never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious,
+like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves
+and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion
+shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the
+sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the
+dead beneath were struggling in their sleep. Scattered blocks of black
+stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon
+another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze
+stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy
+ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled
+altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a
+solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds
+stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the
+plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier,
+melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral
+mourners, passing from a nation's grave.
+
+
+89. I was coming down one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above
+Montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where I could
+get no water, and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at the
+turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen, into a
+hollowed pine trunk, I stooped to it, and drank deeply. As I raised my
+head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, "Celui qui
+boira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif." I turned, not understanding
+for a moment what was meant, and saw one of the hill peasants,
+probably returning to his châlet from the market place at Vevay or
+Villeneuve. As I looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he
+went on with the verse: "Mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui
+donnerai, n'aura jamais soif."
+
+
+90. It may perhaps be permitted me[35] to mark the significance of the
+earliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least of those
+in which some Divine appointment or command is stated respecting them.
+They are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from the
+two judgments of water and fire. The Ark rests upon the mountains of
+Ararat; and man, having passed through the great Baptism unto death,
+kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles
+with the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving.
+Again; from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of
+the Deity to His servant is, "Escape to the mountain;" and the morbid
+fear of the hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in
+places of luxury and sin, is strangely marked in Lot's complaining
+reply, "I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." The
+third mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: "Abraham
+lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off." "The Place," the
+mountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed
+of Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in
+that vow: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
+mine help." And the fourth is the delivery of the law on Sinai. It
+seemed then to the monks that the mountains were appointed by their
+Maker to be to man refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and
+altars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards
+connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the
+death, after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed
+Priest; the death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and
+lastly, with the assumption of His office, by the Eternal Priest,
+Lawgiver, and Saviour.
+
+[35] With reference to the choice of mountain dwellings by the greater
+monastic orders.
+
+Observe the connection of these three events. Although the _time_ of
+the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's displeasure, we
+have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that
+the _manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or
+dishonourable to them. Far from this, it cannot, I think, be doubted
+that in the denial of the permission to enter the Promised Land, the
+whole punishment of their sin was included; and that, as far as
+regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for
+them by their Master, in all tenderness and love, and with the full
+purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. It
+might have seemed to _us_ more honourable that both should have been
+permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Tabernacle, the
+congregation of Israel watching by their side; and all whom they loved
+gathered together to receive the last message from the lips of the
+meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed
+priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize
+that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He who
+had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up
+his own spirit. He who had stood among them between the dead and the
+living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to
+him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment
+more, going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and
+deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk in thought with
+those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of
+Israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp,
+towards the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time,
+as step by step they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour
+after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as
+they climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued,
+showed, amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that
+long desert journey, now at last to close. But who shall enter into
+the thoughts of the High Priest as his eye followed those paths of
+ancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of the arid and endless
+hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of
+those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own
+ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which
+the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil,
+the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him still more
+brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?--until at last,
+on the shadeless summit, from him on whom sin was to be laid no more,
+from him on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press
+their graven fire no longer, the brother and the son took breastplate
+and ephod, and left him to his rest. There is indeed a secretness in
+this calm faith, and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is
+difficult for us to enter; but the death of Moses himself is more
+easily to be conceived, and had in it circumstances still more
+touching as regards the influence of the external scene. For forty
+years Moses had not been alone. The care and burden of all the people,
+the weight of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him
+continually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if he had
+conceived them; their tears had been his meat night and day, until he
+had felt as if God had withdrawn His favour from him, and he had
+prayed that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness. And now
+at last the command came, "Get thee up into this mountain." The weary
+hands, that had been so long stayed up against the enemies of Israel,
+might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for
+the shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his
+feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain
+path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim; not strange to his
+aged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain herbage, and the
+broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the silence of
+uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, as now, with
+none beside him but God, he had led his flocks so often; and which he
+had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power to make
+of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of
+deliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life that
+God restored to him for a day the beloved solitudes he had lost, and
+breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the
+world in which he had laboured, and sinned, far beneath his feet in
+that mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten
+for ever. The Dead Sea--a type of God's anger understood by him, of
+all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the
+sea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with
+his Master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it the fair hills of
+Judah, and the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening
+light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant
+fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, with his
+unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost
+rocks, with angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his
+spirit, he put off his earthly armour. We do deep reverence to his
+companion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven;
+but was his death less noble whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales
+of Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the
+knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called in the
+fulness of time, to talk with that Lord upon Hermon of the death that
+He should accomplish at Jerusalem?
+
+And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of
+the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in
+the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable,
+taking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be
+understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity
+by brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of
+the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen
+apostles. And in this, as in many other events recorded by the
+Evangelists, we lose half the meaning, and evade the practical power
+upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our
+Lord was "perfect man,"--"tempted in all things like as we are." Our
+preachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to
+explain the union of the Divinity with the Manhood--an explanation
+which certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature
+of Deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend God. They never can
+explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only
+succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness
+of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of
+this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. We never think of
+Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the instinctive habit of
+our minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning and
+enforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to harbour in
+our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of
+our Lord as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human
+will, and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is:
+and yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of
+the efficiency of His example, depend on His having been this to the
+full. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the
+human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation for
+His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before; then
+takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart."
+From an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on Him the
+ministry of life, He had beheld and rejected the kingdoms of the
+earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the
+ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as in
+Gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.
+
+The tradition is that the Mount of Transfiguration was the summit of
+Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a
+mountain "_apart_," being in those years both, inhabited and
+fortified. All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ had been
+at Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention of travel southward in the
+six days that intervened between the warning given to His disciples
+and the going up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the
+southward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the
+centre of all the Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto
+the river of Egypt; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs
+of Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel? Along its mighty forest
+avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet
+dashed in the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first
+recorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before He
+knelt, could see to the south all the dwellings of the people that had
+sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of Zabulon and of
+Naphtali, Galilee of the nations,--could see, even with His human
+sight, the gleam of that lake by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a
+place loved by Him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left
+unto them desolate; and chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the
+hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home; hills on which yet
+the stones lay loose that had been taken up to cast at Him when He
+left them for ever.
+
+"And as He prayed, two men stood by Him." Among the many ways in which
+we miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than our
+habit of supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the fear of
+death. How could He then have been tempted as we are?--since among all
+the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than
+that fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity which we can
+never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as His sorrow
+for Lazarus with the consciousness of His power to restore him; but it
+_had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the
+presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those
+two at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the
+work of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now in the
+fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the
+ministrants come to Him from the grave. But, from the grave,
+conquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had
+sealed long ago; the other, from the rest into which he had entered
+without seeing corruption. "There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and
+spake of His decease." Then, when the prayer is ended, the task
+accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full
+glory falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to His
+everlasting Sonship and power. "Hear ye Him."
+
+If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavour to
+follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of bygone days,
+closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and
+sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may
+perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if
+we neither seek any influence for good, nor submit to it unsought, in
+scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as
+inspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they had any task
+or trial laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of
+spirit. Nor perhaps should we have unprofitably entered into the mind
+of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the
+chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes
+admit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their
+solitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our race; and
+indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the
+earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of His terror on
+Sinai, these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of
+all good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of
+His mercy, that fell, snowlike, on the Mount of Transfiguration.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+
+Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31045-8.txt or 31045-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/4/31045/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/31045-8.zip b/31045-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..176830a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045-8.zip
diff --git a/31045-h.zip b/31045-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54997ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045-h.zip
diff --git a/31045-h/31045-h.htm b/31045-h/31045-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..640d686
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045-h/31045-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,3910 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" name="linkgenerator" />
+    <title>
+      Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;}
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .xx-small {font-size: 60%;}
+    .x-small {font-size: 75%;}
+    .small {font-size: 85%;}
+    .large {font-size: 115%;}
+    .x-large {font-size: 130%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent25  { margin-left: 25%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    .indent35  { margin-left: 35%;}
+    .indent40  { margin-left: 40%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
+                font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
+                text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
+                border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border:        solid 1px;}
+    .head      { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border:        solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Frondes Agrestes
+       Readings in 'Modern Painters'
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: January 22, 2010 [EBook #31045]
+Last Updated: February 12, 2019
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      FRONDES AGRESTES.
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS.'
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By John Ruskin
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Chosen At Her Pleasure, By The Author's Friend, The Younger Lady Of The
+      Thwaite, Coniston.
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      <i>'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes.'</i>
+    </h3>
+    <h5>
+      Thirty-Eighth Thousand.
+    </h5>
+    <h4>
+      London: George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. 1902.
+    </h4>
+    <h4>
+      Printed By Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co. At the Ballantyne Press
+    </h4>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> FRONDES AGRESTES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> SECTION I. &mdash; PRINCIPLES OF ART. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SECTION II. &mdash; POWER AND OFFICE OF
+      IMAGINATION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> SECTION III. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> SECTION IV. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: STREAMS AND
+      SEA. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> SECTION V. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> SECTION VI. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> SECTION VII. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND
+      FLOWERS. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> SECTION VIII. &mdash; EDUCATION. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> SECTION IX. &mdash; MORALITIES. </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have been often asked to republish the first book of mine which the
+      public noticed, and which, hitherto, remains their favourite, in a more
+      easily attainable form than that of its existing editions. I am, however,
+      resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts of it being,
+      by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary; and others having
+      been always useless, in their praise of excellence which the public will
+      never give the labour necessary to discern. But, finding lately that one
+      of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age, retains the cheerfulness and
+      easily delighted temper of bright youth, had written out, for her own
+      pleasure, a large number of passages from 'Modern Painters,' it seemed to
+      me certain that what such a person felt to be useful to herself, could not
+      but be useful also to a class of readers whom I much desired to please,
+      and who would sometimes enjoy, in my early writings, what I never should
+      myself have offered them. I asked my friend, therefore, to add to her own
+      already chosen series, any other passages she thought likely to be of
+      permanent interest to general readers; and I have printed her selections
+      in absolute submission to her judgment, merely arranging the pieces she
+      sent me in the order which seemed most convenient for the reciprocal
+      bearing of their fragmentary meanings, and adding here and there an
+      explanatory note; or, it may be, a deprecatory one, in cases where my mind
+      had changed. That she did me the grace to write every word with her own
+      hands, adds, in my eyes, and will, I trust, in the readers' also, to the
+      possible claims of the little book on their sympathy; and although I hope
+      to publish some of the scientific and technical portions of the original
+      volumes in my own large editions, the selections here made by my friend
+      under her quiet woods at Coniston&mdash;the Unter-Walden of England&mdash;will,
+      I doubt not, bring within better reach of many readers, for whom I am not
+      now able myself to judge or choose, such service as the book was ever
+      capable of rendering, in the illustration of the powers of nature, and
+      intercession for her now too often despised and broken peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herne Hill,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5th December, 1874.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FRONDES AGRESTES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION I. &mdash; PRINCIPLES OF ART.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible
+      pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral
+      nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from some
+      forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered
+      than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically
+      patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample upon
+      it,&mdash;lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It is
+      good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of unkind
+      thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks
+      all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good heart, that shows
+      no too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it
+      is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to believe and to try all
+      things; and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it
+      has tried, nor take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has
+      in things that it finds true and good, is so great, that it cannot
+      possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it
+      cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its
+      visions and its delights are too penetrating,&mdash;too living,&mdash;for
+      any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It
+      clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit
+      ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is ignoble,
+      and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble; and that
+      geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations,
+      than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in
+      opening to us the houses of heaven, than in teaching navigation; botany
+      better in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better
+      in investigating organization than in setting limbs.&mdash;Only it is
+      ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more
+      exalted range of science adds something also to its practical
+      applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of
+      which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to
+      farther vision the being and the glory of Him in whom they rejoice and we
+      live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing
+      as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by
+      them with such single desire as the imperfection of their nature may
+      admit; that the strong torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the
+      hills with hollow thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet
+      their bounden charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce
+      flames to which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror,
+      temper for us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for
+      our incitement, I say, not our reward,&mdash;for knowledge is its own
+      reward,&mdash;herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and
+      stars their times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty{1} that the highest pleasures of
+      sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to arrive at
+      them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces, tower over
+      tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would
+      never have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and
+      the inherent desires of every individual. But no such contradiction exists
+      in the system of Divine Providence; which, leaving it open to us, if we
+      will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like every other, and
+      pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate
+      with deadly meats, until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its
+      sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it
+      concentrates the labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an
+      hour,&mdash;leaves it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make
+      ourselves susceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from
+      our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but
+      which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always,
+      harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and
+      eternal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {1} The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in
+      the Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know
+      all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical
+      contents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which I
+      doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends
+      upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a
+      mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,&mdash;always
+      passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting continually that he
+      cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen,&mdash;not by
+      any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the man who has no
+      invention is always setting things in order,{2} and putting the world to
+      rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself on his doings,
+      as supreme in all ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {2} I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a
+      ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and orderly,
+      and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate, and
+      the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased with quiet
+      instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of coarse form; and by
+      long acquaintance with the best things, to discern quickly what is fine
+      from what is common&mdash;so far acquired taste is an honourable faculty,
+      and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in good taste." But,{3} so
+      far as this higher education has a tendency to narrow the sympathies and
+      harden the heart, diminishing the interest of all beautiful things by
+      familiarity, until even what is best can hardly please, and what is
+      brightest hardly entertain,&mdash;so far as it fosters pride, and leads
+      men to found the pleasure they take in anything, not on the worthiness of
+      the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates some greatness of their
+      own, (as people build marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so
+      much because they like the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the
+      foot, as because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all
+      human eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);&mdash;so far as it
+      leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value
+      of substance and heart, liking a well-<i>said</i> thing better than a true
+      thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a
+      delicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,&mdash;and in all
+      other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting
+      truth;&mdash;so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent
+      distinction between class and class, and causes everything to be more or
+      less despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure,
+      and grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with the
+      affection and grief of a well-bred man;&mdash;just so far, in all these
+      several ways, the feeling induced by what is called "a liberal education"
+      is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {3} Nobody need begin this second volume sentence unless they are breathed
+      like the Græme:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Right up Ben Ledi could he press, And not a sob his toil confess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern facts
+      in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before
+      him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their noblest associations;
+      and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and
+      fallacies again presented to him in his dreams.{4}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {4} Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the
+      government of the mind is, than the force of its exertion. Nearly all the
+      world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted. Moses has
+      never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere ruddy
+      stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.{5} What single
+      example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so much as
+      the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or aged men with
+      flowing beards, he <i>may</i> remember, who, when he looked at his Louvre
+      or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for David, or Moses.
+      But does he suppose that, if these pictures had suggested to him the
+      feeblest image of the presence of such men, he would have passed on, as he
+      assuredly did, to the next picture, representing, doubtless, Diana and
+      Actæon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a gambling quarrel in a pothouse&mdash;with
+      no sense of pain or surprise? Let him meditate over the matter, and he
+      will find ultimately that what I say is true, and that religious art at
+      once complete and sincere never yet has existed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {5} I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi, or
+      Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper feelings,
+      even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,&mdash;Tintoret and Fra
+      Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with
+      the greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for <i>them</i>,
+      remains true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION II. &mdash; POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,&mdash;that is to say,
+      of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which
+      cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,{6} to
+      enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded as
+      belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this. It is
+      given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven, and
+      earth, and sea, as if they were now present,&mdash;the souls of the
+      righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the
+      inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most desire
+      to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of
+      angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird
+      us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we are
+      commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at every recorded
+      event of the history of the Redeemer. Its second and ordinary use is, to
+      empower us to traverse the scenes of all other history, and to force the
+      facts to become again visible, so as to make upon us the same impression
+      which they would have made if we had witnessed them; and, in the minor
+      necessities of life, to enable us, out of any present good, to gather the
+      utmost measure of enjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and,
+      in any present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
+      hours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in
+      allegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce
+      them; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it with
+      such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the suggestive voices
+      of natural things, permitting it to possess living companionship, instead
+      of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies in the grass, and naiads
+      in the wave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {6} I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question here
+      raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement, the
+      account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture on
+      Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make it
+      generally accessible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination, let
+      none of us despise the power and art of memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to have
+      the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often rise
+      before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the leaf in
+      its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the fitful foam
+      be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and
+      then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble sun-stain, (though even
+      that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit&mdash;the
+      true and perfect image of life indeed. Or rather, (for the full majesty of
+      such a power is not thus sufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it
+      would be in effect nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at
+      any moment into any scene&mdash;a gift as great as can be possessed by a
+      disembodied spirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only
+      the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very
+      bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them in
+      act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was granted to
+      the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them fastened at
+      our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and stayed on the
+      eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning purpose.&mdash;Conceive,
+      so far as is possible, such power as this, and then say whether the art
+      which conferred it is to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not
+      rather reverence, as half-divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise
+      us into the rank, and invest us with the felicities, of angels.{7}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {7} Passage written in opposition to the vulgar notion that the 'mere
+      imitation' of Nature is easy, and useless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do
+      not mean by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation of speaking
+      his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what <i>he</i>
+      can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great
+      men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and
+      are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they
+      are right in them; only they do not think much of themselves on that
+      account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer
+      writes calmly to one who has found fault with his work,&mdash;"It cannot
+      be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem
+      or two that would have puzzled anybody else; only they do not expect their
+      fellow-men, therefore, to fall down and worship them. They have a curious
+      under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not <i>in</i>
+      them, but <i>through</i> them&mdash;that they could not do or be anything
+      else than God made them; and they see something divine and God-made in
+      every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly
+      merciful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. As far as I can observe, it is a constant law, that the greatest men,
+      whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and the
+      greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age. Dante
+      paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the
+      fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the
+      sixteenth; all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error
+      of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital present. If
+      it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays on subjects
+      belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they <i>are</i>
+      perfect plays, just because there is no care about centuries in them, but
+      a life which all men recognise for the human life of all time&mdash;and
+      this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give universal truth, but
+      because painting, honestly and completely, from the men about him, he
+      painted that human nature which is indeed constant enough,&mdash;a rogue
+      in the fifteenth century being <i>at heart</i> what a rogue is in the
+      nineteenth, and was in the twelfth; and an honest or knightly man being in
+      like manner very similar to other such at any other time. And the work of
+      these great idealists is, therefore, always universal; not because it is
+      not <i>portrait</i>, but because it is <i>complete</i> portrait, down to
+      the heart, which is the same in all ages; and the work of the mean
+      idealists is <i>not</i> universal, not because it is portrait, but because
+      it is <i>half</i> portrait&mdash;of the outside, the manners and the
+      dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakespeare paint, both of
+      them, simply Venetian and English nature, as they saw it in their time,
+      down to the root; and it does for <i>all</i> time; but as for any care to
+      cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of thought, or custom,
+      of past time in their historical work, you will find it in neither of
+      them,{8} nor in any other perfectly great man that I know of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {8} What vestige of Egyptian character is there, for instance, in
+      Cleopatra?&mdash;of Athenian in Theseus or Timon?&mdash;of old English in
+      Imogen or Cordelia?&mdash;of old Scottish in Macbeth?&mdash;or even of
+      mediæval Italian in Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, or Desdemona? And
+      the Roman plays appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome
+      was the eternal strength of the world,&mdash;pure family life, sustained
+      by agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13. I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my calling
+      Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of literature. Those
+      who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the
+      exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my
+      placing in higher rank that poetry of careless glance and reckless rhyme
+      in which Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who are
+      familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who have in
+      any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German philosophy, may
+      be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality to Scott among the
+      literary men of Europe, in an age which has produced De Balzac, and
+      Goethe.{9}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {9} I knew nothing of Goethe when I put him with Balzac; but the
+      intolerable dulness which encumbers the depth of Wilhelm Meister, and the
+      cruel reserve which conceals from all but the intensest readers the
+      meaning of Faust, have made him, in a great degree, an evil influence in
+      European literature; and Evil is always second-rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and
+      description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether of
+      lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw. The
+      true seer feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much
+      describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;
+      leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels, but
+      goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing and
+      careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain
+      recording of what people said, and did; or with the right invention of
+      what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent a
+      story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is
+      necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and
+      know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do,
+      requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate emotion
+      delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and
+      thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for
+      one who is able to enter into all the feelings of somebody sitting on the
+      other side of the table. Even, therefore, where this sentimental
+      literature is first rate, as in passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it
+      ought not to be ranked so high as the creative; and though perfection even
+      in narrow fields is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long
+      before we have another "In Memoriam" as another "Guy Mannering," I
+      unhesitatingly receive as a greater manifestation of power, the right
+      invention of a few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their
+      supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the
+      self-examining verse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      14. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but
+      Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth&mdash;and her home is in heaven.
+      Shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from
+      breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her
+      the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the keeping of
+      the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.{10}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {10} I leave this passage, as my friend has chosen it; but it is
+      unintelligible without the contexts, which show how all the emotions
+      described in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on trust
+      in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great man
+      will "bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him, and
+      answer some end for which no other word would have done equally well. A
+      common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to apply the word
+      'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There is a certain
+      freshness and energy in the term, which gives it agreeableness, but it
+      seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it complimentarily. If the
+      person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty seems increased; and when
+      farther he is at one and the same moment to be called a 'whelp' and
+      contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common idealist might well be
+      brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do it:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    "Awake his warlike spirit,
+  And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
+  Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
+  Making defeat on the full power of France,
+  While his most mighty father on a hill
+  Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
+  Forage in blood of French nobility."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree of
+      simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses us
+      most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty. That
+      beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and glittering
+      streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses
+      us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film
+      on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it
+      occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand bush, nor in any wise
+      prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but because the gossamer is known
+      by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the other grey film is known
+      to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble
+      mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all
+      the while the thoughts and knowledge which cause us to receive this
+      impression are so obscure that we are not conscious of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the sight
+      of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like
+      dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect
+      knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at
+      the work of the great Builder of its walls and foundations; then an
+      apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and
+      your own transientness, as of the grass upon its side;&mdash;then, and in
+      very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations, in
+      seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are floating over
+      your head, nor the cottage wall on the other side of the field, nor the
+      road by which you are travelling. But they saw <i>that</i>. The wall of
+      granite in the heavens was the same to them as to you. They have ceased to
+      look upon it; you will soon cease to look also, and the granite wall will
+      be for others. Then, mingled with these more solemn imaginations, come the
+      understandings of the gifts and glories of the Alp;&mdash;the fancying
+      forth of all the fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong
+      rivers that are born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that
+      wind between its cliffs, and all the châlets that gleam among its clouds,
+      and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures; while, together with the
+      thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human
+      life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of
+      the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. These images, and
+      far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at the
+      sight of the Alps. You may not trace them in your heart, for there is a
+      great deal more in your heart, both of evil and good, than you can ever
+      trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that. Assuredly, so far
+      as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain than any other object of
+      the same sweet silvery grey, these are the kind of images which cause you
+      to do so; and observe, these are nothing more than a greater apprehension
+      of the <i>facts</i> of the thing. We call the power 'Imagination,' because
+      it imagines or conceives; but it is only noble imagination, if it imagines
+      or conceives the <i>truth</i>. And according to the degree of knowledge
+      possessed, and of sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character of
+      the things known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      18. So natural is it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather than
+      in present possession, and so subtle is the charm which the imagination
+      casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often a more touching
+      power in the scenes which contain far-away promises of something greater
+      than themselves, than in those which exhaust the treasures and powers of
+      nature in an unconquerable and excellent glory, leaving nothing more to be
+      by fancy pictured or pursued. I do not know that there is a district in
+      the world more calculated to illustrate this power of the expectant
+      imagination than that which surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland,
+      extending from it towards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably
+      elevated, but presenting no object of striking interest to the passing
+      traveller; so that as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty
+      journey from the Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded
+      with any other sensation than that of weariness, all the more painful
+      because accompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the
+      splendour of the Bernese Oberland. The traveller&mdash;foot-sore,
+      feverish, and satiated with glacier and precipice,&mdash;lies back in the
+      corner of the diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is
+      winding and hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and
+      tame. Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of staying
+      in it a few days, until his mind has recovered its tone, and take one or
+      two long walks through its fields, and he will have other thoughts of it.
+      It is, as I said, an undulating district of grey sandstone, never
+      attaining any considerable height, but having enough of the mountain
+      spirit to throw itself into continual succession of bold slope and dale;
+      elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to render the pine a
+      frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges. Through this elevated
+      tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred feet in
+      depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle hills, unthought of
+      until its edge is approached; and then, suddenly, through the boughs of
+      the firs, the eye perceives, beneath, the green and gliding stream, and
+      the broad walls of sandstone cliff that form its banks; hollowed out where
+      the river leans against them, at its turns, into perilous over-hanging;
+      and, on the other shore, at the same spots, leaving little breadths of
+      meadow between them and the water, half overgrown with thicket, deserted
+      in their sweetness, inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any
+      curious wanderers along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for
+      existence beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and
+      murmurs in an outer solitude. It is passing through a thickly peopled
+      country; but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away
+      torrent among the high hills has its companions; the goats browse beside
+      it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with his staff;
+      and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his mill-wheel. But
+      this stream has no companions; it flows on in an infinite seclusion, not
+      secret, nor threatening, but a quietness of sweet daylight and open air&mdash;a
+      broad space of tender and deep desolateness, drooped into repose out of
+      the midst of human labour and life; the waves plashing lowly, with none to
+      hear them; and the wild birds building in the boughs, with none to fray
+      them away; and the soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading,
+      with no hand to gather them;&mdash;and yet all bright and bare to the
+      clouds above, and to the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain.
+      But above the brows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed.
+      A few steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and
+      wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine,&mdash;and
+      we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness; the swathes of
+      its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its pretty hamlets all
+      vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden, and goodly with
+      steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, hard, park-like roads
+      rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or disappearing among brown
+      banks of moss, and thickets of the wild raspberry and rose, or gleaming
+      through lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, where the gate
+      opens, or the gateless path turns trustedly aside, unhindered, into the
+      garden of some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride with its golden
+      hives, and carved granaries, and irregular domain of latticed and
+      espaliered cottages, gladdening to look upon in their delicate homeliness&mdash;delicate,
+      yet in some sort, rude; not like our English homes&mdash;trim, laborious,
+      formal, irreproachable in comfort&mdash;but with a peculiar carelessness
+      and largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed
+      loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in all
+      that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and fragrant
+      with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to the scythe. It
+      gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing wrested from it, nor
+      conquered in it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but unrestrained in
+      fruitfulness,&mdash;a generous land, bright with capricious plenty, and
+      laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, kind and wild. Nor this
+      without some sterner element mingled in the heart of it. For, along all
+      its ridges stand the dark masses of innumerable pines,{11} taking no part
+      in its gladness; asserting themselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be
+      pierced or banished even in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and
+      fragments of the night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all
+      the rosy bendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the
+      harvest, and tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes
+      against the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet
+      they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there chiefly
+      to show how bright everything else is round them; and all the clouds look
+      of pure silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter and more living
+      sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points of the pines; and all
+      the pastures look of more glowing green where they run up between the
+      purple trunks; and the sweet field footpaths skirt the edges of the forest
+      for the sake of its shade, sloping up and down about the slippery roots,
+      and losing themselves every now and then hopelessly among the violets and
+      ground-ivy and brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves, and at last plunging
+      into some open aisle, where the light through the distant stems shows that
+      there is a chance of coming out again on the other side; and coming out
+      indeed in a little while from the scented darkness into the dazzling air
+      and marvellous landscape, which stretches still farther and farther in new
+      wilfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of the
+      Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {11} Almost the only pleasure I have, myself, in rereading my old books,
+      is my sense of having at least done justice to the pine. Compare the
+      passage in this book, No. 47.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      19.{12} Although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however
+      apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure; though the whole
+      of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most
+      travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire,
+      Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts aside,
+      there is not an English county which I should not find entertainment in
+      exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,&mdash;yet all my best
+      enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, colouring with
+      their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb. The pleasant French
+      coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either by what real mountain
+      character it has in itself, (for in extent and succession of promontory,
+      the flanks of the French valleys have quite the sublimity of true mountain
+      distances,) or by its broken ground and rugged steps among the vines, and
+      rise of the leafage above against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay
+      or Como. There is not a wave of the Seine, but is associated in my mind
+      with the first rise of the sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau;
+      and with the hope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads
+      to the southwest, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at
+      Charenton. If there be no hope or association of this kind, and if I
+      cannot deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the
+      road there may be the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the
+      horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of
+      sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor
+      Terrace,&mdash;nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual summer&mdash;or
+      of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas,) golden
+      apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite
+      stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {12} This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the general
+      statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own
+      idiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it
+      was, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome reedy
+      fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always in
+      first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of
+      the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness
+      of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of
+      weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the
+      Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses; its slates and
+      tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; its desert of brickwork,
+      full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures, and yet strong, like a bare
+      brown rock; its carelessness of what any one thinks or feels about it,
+      putting forth no claim, having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor
+      grace; yet neither asking for pity; not, as ruins are, useless and
+      piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but, useful still,
+      going through its own daily work,&mdash;as some old fisherman, beaten grey
+      by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint
+      about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and
+      serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound
+      of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak
+      of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the
+      waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore,&mdash;the lighthouse for life,
+      and the belfry for labour, and this&mdash;for patience and praise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come
+      about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the
+      epitome of all that makes the continent of Europe interesting, as opposed
+      to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that agedness in
+      the midst of active life which binds the old and the new into harmony. We
+      in England have our new streets, our new inn, our green shaven lawn, and
+      our piece of ruin emergent from it&mdash;a mere <i>specimen</i> of the
+      Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet, to be shown; and which, but for
+      its size, might as well be on a museum shelf at once, under cover;&mdash;but,
+      on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the past and present;
+      and, in such use as they can serve for, the grey-headed wrecks are
+      suffered to stay with men; while, in unbroken line, the generations of
+      spared buildings are seen succeeding, each in its place. And thus, in its
+      largeness, in its permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in
+      its absence of all pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that
+      Calais tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking
+      because usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of
+      feelings the exact reverse of these.{13}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {13} My friend won't write out the reverse! Our book is to be all jelly,
+      and no powder, it seems. Well, I'm very thankful she likes the jelly,&mdash;at
+      any rate, it makes me sure that <i>it</i> is well made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION III. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      21. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky.
+      It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the sake of
+      pleasing man&mdash;more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to
+      him, and teaching him&mdash;than in any other of her works; and it is just
+      the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other
+      works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere
+      pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but
+      every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered
+      if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud
+      were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all
+      left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening
+      mist for dew;&mdash;and instead of this, there is not a moment of any day
+      of our lives, when Nature is not producing scene after scene, picture
+      after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite
+      and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite
+      certain{14} it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual
+      pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources
+      of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest
+      scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended
+      that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his
+      presence, he ceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is
+      for all: bright as it is, it is not
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    "too bright nor good
+  For human nature's daily food;"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting
+      of the heart,&mdash;for soothing it, and purifying it from its dross and
+      dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful&mdash;never
+      the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost
+      spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to
+      what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or
+      of blessing to what is mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it,
+      we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal
+      sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to
+      brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that
+      we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew
+      which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of
+      meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy
+      of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments
+      of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource,
+      which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has been wet; and
+      another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who among the
+      whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms and the precipices of the
+      chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday?
+      Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon
+      their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain?
+      Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last
+      night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has
+      passed unregretted as unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even
+      for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And
+      yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental
+      energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind,
+      that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in
+      the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are
+      but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be
+      addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued
+      passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the perpetual;
+      that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood;
+      things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally;
+      which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are to be found always,
+      yet each found but once;&mdash;it is through these that the lesson of
+      devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {14} At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At
+      five-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other
+      creatures in the universe to be pleased, or,&mdash;it may be,&mdash;displeased,
+      by the weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not
+      knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most
+      dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the
+      rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt imperceptibly
+      into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into apparent bars,
+      crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed
+      throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour, and purple, and
+      amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen
+      nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; looking
+      as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      23. Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible
+      exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you not only
+      cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other
+      objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being thus actually
+      rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. Where a sunbeam
+      enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable
+      interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a real obstacle
+      to the vision&mdash;you cannot see things clearly through it. In the same
+      way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse rays, there it becomes
+      visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the purity of the blue, and
+      destroying it exactly in proportion to the degree of illumination. But
+      where vapour is in shade, it has very little effect on the sky, perhaps
+      making it a little deeper and greyer than it otherwise would be, but not,
+      itself, unless very dense, distinguishable or felt as mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      24. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {15}That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and
+      white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an
+      inundation&mdash;why is <i>it</i> so heavy, and why does it lie so low,
+      being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour
+      of morning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those
+      colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength
+      to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks,&mdash;why
+      are <i>they</i> so light, their bases high over our heads, high over the
+      heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not as the sun <i>rises</i>, but
+      as he <i>descends</i>, and leave the stars of twilight clear; while the
+      valley vapour gains again upon the earth, like a shroud? Or that ghost of
+      a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay, which does <i>not</i>
+      steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round them, and yet,&mdash;and
+      yet,&mdash;slowly; now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil;
+      now fading, now gone; we look away for an instant, and look back, and it
+      is again there. What has it to do with that clump of pines, that it broods
+      by them, and weaves itself among their branches, to and fro? Has it hidden
+      a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or
+      has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast
+      within those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an
+      archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hills&mdash;that
+      white arch which never forms but over the supreme crest,&mdash;how is it
+      stayed there, repelled apparently from the snow,&mdash;nowhere touching
+      it, the clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving
+      it&mdash;poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? Or those war clouds
+      that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire,&mdash;how
+      is their barbed strength bridled? What bits are those they are champing
+      with their vapourous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued
+      leviathans of the Sea of Heaven,&mdash;out of their nostrils goeth smoke,
+      and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him that
+      layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where
+      ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the measures of their
+      march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until evening&mdash;what
+      rebuke is this which has awed them into peace;&mdash;what hand has reined
+      them back by the way in which they came?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {15} This is a fifth volume bit, and worth more attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these are
+      easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the
+      mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all. "Knowest
+      thou the balancings of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be one of pride?
+      The wondrous works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge? Is <i>our</i>
+      knowledge ever to be so?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I think
+      he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see less
+      beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him with hard
+      questions; to which perhaps, if we look close at the heavenly scroll, we
+      may find also a syllable or two of answer, illuminated here and there.{16}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {16} Compare, in 'Sartor Resartus,' the boy's watching from the garden
+      wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And though the climates of the south and east may be <i>comparatively</i>
+      clear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air.
+      Intense clearness, whether, in the north, after or before rain, or in some
+      moments of twilight in the south, is always, as far as I am acquainted
+      with natural phenomena, a <i>notable</i> thing. Mist of some sort, or
+      mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general facts; the
+      distance may vary in different climates at which the effects of mist
+      begin, but they are always present; and therefore, in all probability, it
+      is meant that we should enjoy them.... We surely need not wonder that mist
+      and all its phenomena have been made delightful to us, since our happiness
+      as thinking beings must depend on our being content to accept only partial
+      knowledge even in those matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist
+      upon perfect intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral
+      subject, we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole
+      happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being able to
+      breathe and live in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and closing
+      there; rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of
+      stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the
+      concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the
+      untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness
+      wearied. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the
+      mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken for
+      virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly,
+      and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always
+      be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,) wherever <i>pride</i>
+      has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued.
+      Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man perished in seeking
+      knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed
+      before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we
+      shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in humbleness, it instantly
+      becomes an element of pleasure; and I think that every rightly constituted
+      mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as in
+      feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot know. None but proud
+      or weak men would mourn over this, for we may always know more, if we
+      choose, by working on; but the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in
+      knowing that the journey is endless, the treasure inexhaustible,&mdash;watching
+      the cloud still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being
+      sure that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the
+      mysteries of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their
+      dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I
+      know there are an evil mystery, and a deathful dimness,&mdash;the mystery
+      of the great Babylon&mdash;the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do
+      not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which the
+      "angels desire to look into," or with the dimness which, even before the
+      clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the eternal
+      volume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,{17} when the night mists first
+      rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields, as they
+      float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded summits of the
+      lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a
+      windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is
+      sent upon the silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface
+      parts, and passes away, and down under their depths the glittering city
+      and green pastures lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of winding
+      rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among
+      the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and
+      the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey
+      shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those
+      scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you,
+      along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent
+      with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
+      leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of
+      material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again
+      above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible dream,
+      foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the
+      unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a little
+      longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers,
+      and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless,
+      only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into the sky, and
+      casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the
+      horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark,
+      pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey
+      network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will
+      stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of the leaves, together;&mdash;and
+      then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and
+      lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, among the shoulders of
+      the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a place
+      which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the
+      precipice, as a hawk pauses over his prey;&mdash;and then you will hear
+      the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers
+      of vapour swept away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque
+      rain, let down to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black
+      bending fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing
+      its surface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall
+      see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their broad
+      sides smoking and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of
+      capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again,&mdash;while the
+      smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball
+      beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind
+      and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more,
+      dyeing all the air about it with blood;&mdash;and then you shall hear the
+      fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a green
+      halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter, brighter yet,
+      till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred
+      clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her
+      kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy
+      wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together
+      hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their
+      unity of motion that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the
+      earth to reel under them. And then wait yet for one hour, until the east
+      again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in
+      darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of
+      its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about
+      the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the
+      columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each
+      in itself a new morning&mdash;their long avalanches cast down in keen
+      streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven
+      snow, like altar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
+      flushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer light
+      through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every
+      wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is
+      interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault beyond vault, as
+      with the drifted wings of many companies of angels; and then, when you can
+      look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love
+      of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this His
+      message unto men!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {17} I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection of
+      the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand for
+      a day and night in observation; to suffer the effects of a severe
+      thunder-storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such a
+      storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much
+      doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      26.{18} The account given of the stages of creation in the first chapter
+      of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest
+      reader, except in the statement of the work of the second day. I suppose
+      that this statement is passed over by careless readers without any
+      endeavour to understand it, and contemplated by simple and faithful
+      readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be understood. But
+      there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter, and it seems to me
+      unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And the passage ought to be
+      peculiarly interesting to us, as being the first in the Bible in which the
+      heavens are named, and the only one in which the word "Heaven,"
+      all-important as that word is to our understanding of the most precious
+      promises of Scripture, receives a definite explanation. Let us therefore
+      see whether, by a little careful comparison of the verse with other
+      passages in which the word occurs, we may not be able to arrive at as
+      clear an understanding of this portion of the chapter as of the rest. In
+      the first place the English word, "Firmament," itself is obscure and
+      useless; because we never employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys
+      no other distinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity
+      with it we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point
+      nor value than if it were written, "God said, Let there be a something in
+      the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven." But the
+      marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value; and the statement that
+      "God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of the waters, and God
+      called the expansion, Heaven," has an apprehensible meaning. Accepting
+      this expression as the one intended, we have next to ask what expansion
+      there is, between two waters, describable by the term "heaven." Milton
+      adopts the term "expanse," but he understands it of the whole volume of
+      the air which surrounds the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there
+      is no water beyond the air, in the fields of space; and the whole
+      expression of division of waters from waters is thus rendered valueless.
+      Now with respect to this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is
+      intended for the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader
+      only; and that therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the
+      likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows
+      little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds
+      the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain
+      was falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of the
+      clouds from which the shower descended, without being able to attach an
+      instant and easy meaning to the words, "expansion in the midst of the
+      waters;" and if, having once seized this idea, he proceeded to examine it
+      more accurately, he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed <i>anything</i>
+      of the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases did indeed
+      most severely and stringently divide "waters from waters"&mdash;that is to
+      say, divide water in its collective and tangible state, from water in its
+      aërial state; or the waters which <i>fall</i>, and <i>flow</i>, from those
+      which <i>rise</i>, and <i>float</i>. Next, if we try this interpretation
+      in the theological sense of the word <i>heaven</i>, and examine whether
+      the clouds are spoken of as God's dwelling-place, we find God going before
+      the Israelites in a pillar of cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on
+      Sinai; appearing in a cloud on the mercy-seat; filling the Temple of
+      Solomon with the cloud when its dedication is accepted; appearing in a
+      great cloud to Ezekiel; ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the
+      disciples on Mount Olivet; and in like manner returning to judgment:
+      "Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." "Then shall
+      they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and
+      great glory." While, further, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as
+      interchangeable words in those psalms which most distinctly set forth the
+      power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made darkness
+      pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies."
+      And again, "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy faithfulness
+      reacheth unto the clouds." And again, "His excellency is over Israel, and
+      His strength is in the clouds." And again, "The clouds poured out water,
+      the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy thunder was in the heaven."
+      Again, "Clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and
+      judgment are the habitation of His throne; the heavens declare His
+      righteousness, and all the people see His glory." In all these passages
+      the meaning is unmistakable if they possess definite meaning at all. We
+      are too apt to take them merely for sublime and vague imagery, and
+      therefore gradually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The
+      expression, "He bowed the heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received
+      by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some
+      peculiar and fearful manifestation of God's power to the writer of the
+      psalm in which the words occur. But the expression either has <i>plain</i>
+      meaning, or it has <i>no</i> meaning. Understand by the term "heavens" the
+      compass of infinite space around the earth, and the expression "bowed the
+      heavens," however sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space
+      cannot be bent or bowed. But understand by the "heavens" the veil of
+      clouds above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor
+      obscure; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not as
+      revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He is still
+      doing before our own eyes, day by day. By accepting the words in their
+      simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate presence of the
+      Deity, and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the
+      storm-cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague and inaccurate
+      acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His presence far from us,
+      into a region which we can neither see nor know: and gradually, from the
+      close realization of a living God, who "maketh the clouds His chariot," we
+      define and explain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive
+      God inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the multitudinous
+      formalisms of the laws of Nature. All errors of this kind&mdash;and in the
+      present day we are in constant and grievous danger of falling into them&mdash;arise
+      from the originally mistaken idea that man can, "by searching, find out
+      God&mdash;find out the Almighty to perfection"&mdash;that is to say, by
+      help of courses of reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the
+      nature of the Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a
+      state of comparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the
+      beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to His
+      creatures should be a <i>simple</i> way, which <i>all</i> those creatures
+      may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity or
+      enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should be
+      possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be rested, not
+      on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their having a human
+      soul. In order to render this communion possible, the Deity has stooped
+      from His throne, and has, not only in the person of the Son, taken upon
+      Him the veil of our human <i>flesh</i>, but, in the person of the Father,
+      taken upon Him the veil of our human <i>thoughts</i>, and permitted us, by
+      His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply and clearly as a loving
+      father and friend; a being to be walked with and reasoned with, to be
+      moved by our entreaties, angered by our rebellion, alienated by our
+      coldness, pleased by our love, and glorified by our labour; and, finally,
+      to be beheld in immediate and active presence in all the powers and
+      changes of creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is
+      evidently the only one which can be universal, and, therefore, the only
+      one which <i>for us</i> can be true. The moment that, in our pride of
+      heart, we refuse to accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire
+      Him, instead of stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His
+      glory, we hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human
+      knowledge higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,&mdash;God
+      takes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and inconceivable
+      majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our ways, and retires
+      into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we are left alone. And
+      presently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {18} This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and
+      best, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify it,
+      thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received as it
+      explains them, or neglected altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own creation as
+      under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and imagination it would be
+      received by a simple-minded man; and finding that "the heavens and the
+      earth" are spoken of always as having something like equal relation to
+      each other, ("Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the
+      host of them,") I reject at once all idea of the term "heavens" being
+      intended to signify the infinity of space inhabited by countless worlds;
+      for between those infinite heavens and the particle of sand, which not the
+      earth only, but the sun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation
+      to them, no relation of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I
+      suppose the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal
+      companionship with our globe; I understand the "rolling of these heavens
+      together as a scroll," to be an equal and relative destruction with the
+      melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the making of
+      the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned, most
+      magnificent ordinance of the clouds;&mdash;the ordinance that, as the
+      great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a plain
+      of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the face of the
+      cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper and heavenly plain
+      should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer
+      quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their own bosoms; no longer
+      murmuring only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, but answering
+      each other with their own voices, from pole to pole; no longer restrained
+      by established shores, and guided through unchanging channels, but going
+      forth at their pleasure like the armies of the angels, and choosing their
+      encampments upon the heights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for
+      ever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the
+      abyss, but covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and
+      robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of diverse
+      colours, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries
+      flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This I believe is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me that
+      in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means us to
+      acknowledge His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and blessing
+      us: "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God."
+      "He doth set His bow in the clouds," and thus renews, in the sound of
+      every drooping swathe of rain, His promises of everlasting love. "In them
+      hath He set a <i>tabernacle</i> for the sun;" whose burning ball, which,
+      without the firmament, would be seen but as an intolerable and scorching
+      circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament surrounded with
+      gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries: by the firmament
+      of clouds the temple is built, for his presence to fill with light at
+      noon; by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening,
+      round the sanctuary of his rest; by the mists of the firmament his
+      implacable light is divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into
+      the soft blue that fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the
+      flush with which the mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the
+      dayspring. And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men,
+      through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the
+      stooping of His own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As
+      the Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot
+      behold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men, those
+      heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: "Swear not, neither by heaven, for
+      it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool!" And all
+      those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and grateful shade, and all
+      those visions of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of
+      moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of coloured robe and
+      cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and
+      distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, "Our Father, which art in
+      heaven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION IV. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: STREAMS AND SEA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      27. Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and
+      without assistance and combination, water is the most wonderful. If we
+      think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we
+      have seen in clouds,&mdash;then, as the instrument by which the earth we
+      have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into
+      grace;&mdash;then, as in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has
+      made with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we
+      had not seen;&mdash;then, as it exists in the foam of the torrent, in the
+      iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep
+      crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and
+      glancing river;&mdash;finally, in that which is to all human minds the
+      best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power the wild, various,
+      fantastic, tameless unity of the sea;&mdash;what shall we compare to this
+      mighty, this universal element, for glory and beauty? or how shall we
+      follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a
+      soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      28. The great angel of the sea&mdash;rain; the angel, observe,&mdash;the
+      messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the diffused,
+      perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and returning of
+      the intermittent cloud. All turns upon that intermittence. Soft moss on
+      stone and rock; cave fern of tangled glen; wayside well&mdash;perennial,
+      patient, silent, clear, stealing through its square font of rough-hewn
+      stone; ever thus deep, no more;&mdash;which the winter wreck sullies not,
+      the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of stain as of decline;&mdash;where
+      the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the insect darts undefiling: cressed
+      brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even in flood scarcely over its
+      stepping stones,&mdash;but through all sweet summer keeping tremulous
+      music with harp-strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the
+      pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river gods have all hasted, and
+      gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand,
+      their broad beds lie ghastly and bare; but here in the moss lands, the
+      soft wings of the sea angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their
+      plumes falter on the hills; strange laughings and glitterings of silver
+      streamlets, born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling
+      tinsel, answering to them as they wave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      29. Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north
+      side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first
+      bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the
+      brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet
+      thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from
+      above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted
+      above it under all their leaves,{19} at the instant that it breaks into
+      foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so
+      much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon startling you with its
+      white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket,
+      bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light;
+      and how through the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below,
+      the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the
+      sky through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in
+      tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the
+      choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the
+      thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water,&mdash;their
+      dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some
+      stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as
+      its roar dies away,&mdash;the dew gushing from their thick branches
+      through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white
+      threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens, which
+      chase and chequer them with purple and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {19} Well noticed. The drawing of the fall of Schaffhausen, which I made
+      at the time of writing this study, was one of the very few, either by
+      other draughtsmen or myself, which I have seen Turner pause at with
+      serious attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      30. Close beside the path by which travellers ascend the Montanvert from
+      the valley of Chamouni, on the right hand, where it first begins to rise
+      among the pines, there descends a small stream from the foot of the
+      granite peak known to the guides as the Aiguille Charmoz. It is concealed
+      from the traveller by a thicket of alder, and its murmur is hardly heard,
+      for it is one of the weakest streams of the valley. But it is a constant
+      stream, fed by a permanent, though small, glacier; and continuing to flow
+      even to the close of summer, when more copious torrents, depending only on
+      the melting of the lower snows, have left their beds,&mdash;"stony
+      channels in the sun." The long drought which took place in the autumn of
+      1854, sealing every source of waters except these perpetual ones, left the
+      torrent of which I am speaking, and such others, in a state peculiarly
+      favourable to observance of their <i>least</i> action on the mountains
+      from which they descend. They were entirely limited to their own ice
+      fountains, and the quantity of powdered rock which they brought down was,
+      of course, at its minimum, being nearly unmingled with any earth derived
+      from the dissolution of softer soil, or vegetable mould, by rains. At
+      three in the afternoon, on a warm day in September, when the torrent had
+      reached its average maximum strength for the day, I filled an ordinary
+      Bordeaux wine flask with the water where it was least turbid. From this
+      quart of water I obtained twenty-four grains of sand and sediment more or
+      less fine. I cannot estimate the quantity of water in the stream; but the
+      runlet of it at which I filled the flask was giving about two hundred
+      bottles a minute, or rather more, carrying down, therefore, about three
+      quarters of a pound of powdered granite every minute. This would be
+      forty-five pounds an hour; but allowing for the inferior power of the
+      stream in the cooler periods of the day, and taking into consideration, on
+      the other side, its increased power in rain, we may, I think, estimate its
+      average hour's work at twenty-eight or thirty pounds, or a hundredweight
+      every four hours. By this insignificant runlet, therefore, rather more
+      than two tons of the substance of the Mont Blanc are displaced and carried
+      down a certain distance every week; and as it is only for three or four
+      months that the flow of the stream is checked by frost, we may certainly
+      allow eighty tons for the mass which it annually moves. It is not worth
+      while to enter into any calculation of the relation borne by this runlet
+      to the great torrents which descend from the chain of Mont Blanc into the
+      valley of Chamouni.{20} I but take this quantity, eighty tons, as the
+      result of the labour of a scarcely noticeable runlet at the side of one of
+      them, utterly irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of
+      mountain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the flank of
+      a soft rock looking like a trench for a railroad), and we shall then begin
+      to apprehend something of the operation of the great laws of change which
+      are the conditions of all material existence, however apparently enduring.
+      The hills, which, as compared with living beings, seem "everlasting," are
+      in truth as perishing as they; its veins of flowing fountain weary the
+      mountain heart, as the crimson pulse does ours; the natural force of the
+      iron crag is abated in its appointed time, like the strength of the sinews
+      in a human old age; and it is but the lapse of the longer years of decay
+      which, in the sight of its Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from
+      the moth and the worm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {20} I have slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient
+      of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the ludicrous
+      under-estimate of the mass of the larger streams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      31. Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a
+      powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and
+      nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be unimaginable, not
+      from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete annihilation
+      of the limit between sea and air. The water, from its prolonged agitation,
+      is beaten, not into mere creamy foam, but into masses of accumulated
+      yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave; and where one
+      curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery from its edge; these
+      are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in
+      writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white, and thick as
+      with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges
+      themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them
+      white all through, as the water is under a great cataract,&mdash;and their
+      masses, being thus half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind
+      whenever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and
+      strangles like actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been
+      exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by
+      it as described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
+      finely divided water, but with boiling mist: imagine also the low
+      rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
+      seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave;
+      and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power,
+      velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and
+      peaks furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you
+      will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea
+      and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark, or natural
+      evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean
+      all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction than you could
+      see through a cataract.{21}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {21} The whole of this was written merely to show the meaning of Turner's
+      picture of the steamer in distress, throwing up signals. It is a good
+      study of wild weather; but, separate from its aim, utterly feeble in
+      comparison to the few words by which any of the great poets will describe
+      sea, when they have got to do it. I am rather proud of the short sentence
+      in the 'Harbours of England,' describing a great breaker against rock:&mdash;"One
+      moment, a flint cave,&mdash;the next, a marble pillar,&mdash;the next, a
+      fading cloud." But there is nothing in sea-description, detailed, like
+      Dickens' storm at the death of Ham, in 'David Copperfield.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION V. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      32. The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are followed
+      immediately by those notable ones,&mdash;"And God said, Let the waters
+      which are under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let
+      the dry land appear." We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep
+      signification of this sentence. We are too apt to receive it as the
+      description of an event vaster only in its extent, not in its nature, than
+      the compelling of the Red Sea to draw back that Israel might pass by. We
+      imagine the Deity in like manner rolling the waves of the greater ocean
+      together on an heap, and setting bars and doors to them eternally. But
+      there is a far deeper meaning than this in the solemn words of Genesis,
+      and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, "His hands prepared the dry
+      land." Up to that moment the earth had been <i>void</i>; for, it had been
+      <i>without</i> <i>form</i>. The command that the waters should be
+      gathered, was the command that the earth should be <i>sculptured</i>. The
+      sea was not driven to its place in suddenly restrained rebellion, but
+      withdrawn to its place in perfect and patient obedience. The dry land
+      appeared, not in level sands forsaken by the surges, which those surges
+      might again claim for their own; but in range beyond range of swelling
+      hill and iron rock, for ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be
+      companioned by the clouds of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of Genesis, is not
+      at present of any importance for us to consider. By what furnaces of fire
+      the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it was torn, and
+      by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea-waves it was engraven and
+      finished into its perfect form, we may, perhaps, hereafter endeavour to
+      conjecture; but here, as in few words the work is summed by the historian,
+      so in few broad thoughts it should be comprehended by us; and, as we read
+      the mighty sentence, "Let the dry land appear," we should try to follow
+      the finger of God as it engraved upon the stone tables of the earth the
+      letters and the law of its everlasting form, as gulf by gulf the channels
+      of the deep were ploughed; and cape by cape the lines were traced with
+      Divine foreknowledge of the shores that were to limit the nations; and
+      chain by chain the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their
+      foundations fastened for ever; and the compass was set upon the face of
+      the depth, and the fields and the highest part of the dust of the world
+      were made; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow on Lebanon,
+      and smoothed the slopes of Calvary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not possible,
+      to conjecture the manner or the time in which this work was done; but it
+      is deeply necessary for all men to consider the magnificence of the
+      accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wisdom and love which are
+      manifested in the ordinances of the hills. For observe, in order to bring
+      the world into the form which it now bears, it was not mere <i>sculpture</i>
+      that was needed; the mountains could not stand for a day unless they were
+      formed of materials altogether different from those which constitute the
+      lower hills, and the surfaces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be
+      prepared for every mountain chain, yet not so hard but that it might be
+      capable of crumbling down into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest, and
+      the Alpine flower; not so hard but that in the midst of the utmost majesty
+      of its enthroned strength there should be seen on it the seal of death,
+      and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth against the human
+      frame, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And with this
+      perishable substance the most majestic forms were to be framed that were
+      consistent with the safety of man; and the peak was to be lifted and the
+      cliff rent, as high and as steeply as was possible, in order yet to permit
+      the shepherd to feed his flocks upon the slopes, and the cottage to nestle
+      beneath their shadow. And observe, two distinct ends were to be
+      accomplished in doing this. It was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such
+      eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in any wise for
+      human habitation; for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor
+      the flowing of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for
+      the most part plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and
+      the purifying of the winds, are the least of the services appointed to the
+      hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's
+      working&mdash;to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of
+      astonishment,&mdash;are their higher missions. They are as a great and
+      noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered
+      also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to
+      examine, in their connected system, the features of even the most ordinary
+      mountain scenery, without concluding that it has been prepared in order to
+      unite as far as possible, and in the closest compass, every means of
+      delighting and sanctifying the heart of man: "as far as <i>possible</i>,"&mdash;that
+      is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of
+      condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the
+      cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon
+      them; but they so smite as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms,
+      and so spring as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among
+      our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often too barren to be
+      perfectly beautiful, and always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is
+      strange how many deep sources of delight are gathered into the compass of
+      their glens and vales; and how, down to the most secret cluster of their
+      far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the
+      whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding
+      forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so
+      passionate, that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at last,
+      neglects of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among the true
+      mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose of appeal at once to
+      all the faculties of the human spirit becomes still more manifest.
+      Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the richness of the
+      valleys at their feet; the grey downs of southern England and treeless
+      coteaux of central France, and grey swells of Scottish moor, whatever
+      peculiar charm they may possess in themselves, are at least destitute of
+      those which belong to the woods and fields of the lowlands. But the great
+      mountains <i>lift</i> the lowlands on <i>their sides</i>. Let the reader
+      imagine first the appearance of the most varied plain of some richly
+      cultivated country; let him imagine it dark with graceful woods, and soft
+      with deepest pastures; let him fill the space of it, to the utmost
+      horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents of scenery and life;
+      leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of
+      cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues,
+      and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of
+      cattle; and when he has wearied himself with endless imagining, and left
+      no space without some loveliness of its own, let him conceive all this
+      great plain, with its infinite treasures of natural beauty, and happy
+      human life, gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the
+      other, like a woven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the
+      robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into
+      cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing
+      themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when
+      his horse plunges, and all its villages nestling themselves into the new
+      windings of its glens, and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of
+      greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and sweeping
+      down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying quietly, half
+      on the grass, half in the air,&mdash;and he will have as yet, in all this
+      lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great Alps. And whatever
+      is lovely in the lowland scenery, becomes lovelier in this change; the
+      trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain, assume
+      strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves against the
+      mountain side; they breathe more freely and toss their branches more
+      carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the
+      topmost leaves of its brother tree; the flowers which on the arable plain
+      fall before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable places
+      where year by year they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil;
+      and the streams which in the level land crept in dark eddies by
+      unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are clothed with
+      rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves can
+      reach....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may not, therefore, be altogether profitless or unnecessary to review
+      briefly the nature of the three great offices which mountain ranges are
+      appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the health and increase the
+      happiness of mankind. Their first use is, of course, to give motion to
+      water. Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that crosses
+      the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent march of
+      the everlasting multitude of waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play,
+      and purity, and power, to the ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or
+      steep, extended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's surface is
+      of course necessary before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in
+      its pilgrimage; and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside
+      the margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that
+      ordinance, of which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water
+      is a perpetual sign&mdash;that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the
+      earth shall find no resting-place; shall find, on the contrary, fixed
+      channels traced for them from the ravines of the central crests down which
+      they roar, in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath the banks
+      of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly among the stems
+      and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared for them by which, at
+      some appointed rate of journey, they must evermore descend, sometimes
+      slow, and sometimes swift, but never pausing; the daily portion of the
+      earth they have to glide over marked for them at each successive sunrise,
+      the place which has known them knowing them no more, and the gateways of
+      guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none letting them
+      in their pilgrimage; and, from afar off, the great heart of the sea
+      calling them to itself! "Deep calleth unto deep." I know not which of the
+      two is the more wonderful,&mdash;that calm, gradated, invisible slope of
+      the champaign land, which gives motion to the stream; or that passage
+      cloven for it through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health
+      of the land immediately around them, would yet, unless so supernaturally
+      divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from far-off
+      countries. When did the great spirit of the river first knock at these
+      adamantine gates? When did the porter open to it, and cast his keys away
+      for ever, lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied&mdash;no one should
+      be satisfied&mdash;with that vague answer, The river cut its way. Not so.
+      The river <i>found</i> its way. {22}I do not see that rivers in their own
+      strength can do much in cutting their way; they are nearly as apt to choke
+      their channels up as to carve them out. Only give a river some little
+      sudden power in a valley, and see how it will use it. Cut itself a bed?
+      Not so, by any means, but fill up its bed; and look for another in a wild,
+      dissatisfied, inconsistent manner,&mdash;any way rather than the old one
+      will better please it; and even if it is banked up and forced to keep to
+      the old one, it will not deepen, but do all it can to raise it, and leap
+      out of it. And although wherever water has a steep fall it will swiftly
+      cut itself a bed deep into the rock or ground, it will not, when the rock
+      is hard, cut a wider channel than it actually needs; so that if the
+      existing river beds, through ranges of mountains, had in reality been cut
+      by the streams, they would be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in
+      the form of narrow and profound ravines, like the well-known channel of
+      the Niagara, below the fall; not in that of extended valleys. And the
+      actual work of true mountain rivers, though often much greater in
+      proportion to their body of water than that of the Niagara, is quite
+      insignificant when compared with the area and depth of the valleys through
+      which they flow; so that, although in many cases it appears that those
+      larger valleys have been excavated at earlier periods by more powerful
+      streams, or by the existing stream in a more powerful condition, still the
+      great fact remains always equally plain, and equally admirable, that,
+      whatever the nature and duration of the agencies employed, the earth was
+      so shaped at first as to direct the currents of its rivers in the manner
+      most healthy and convenient for man. The valley of the Rhone may have been
+      in great part excavated, in early times, by torrents a thousand times
+      larger than the Rhone; but it could not have been excavated at all, unless
+      the mountains had been thrown at first into two chains, by which the
+      torrents were set to work in a given direction. And it is easy to conceive
+      how, under any less beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the
+      continents of the earth might either have been covered with enormous
+      lakes, as parts of North America actually are covered; or have become
+      wildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the
+      water would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the year
+      desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole earth is
+      not prepared for the habitation of man; only certain small portions are
+      prepared for him,&mdash;the houses, as it were, of the human race, from
+      which they are to look abroad upon the rest of the world; not to wonder or
+      complain that it is not all house, but to be grateful for the kindness of
+      the admirable building, in the house itself, as compared with the rest. It
+      would be as absurd to think it an evil that all the world is not fit for
+      us to inhabit, as to think it an evil that the globe is no larger than it
+      is. As much as we shall ever need is evidently assigned to us for our
+      dwelling-place; the rest, covered with rolling waves or drifting sands,
+      fretted with ice or crested with fire, is set before us for contemplation
+      in an uninhabitable magnificence. And that part which we are enabled to
+      inhabit owes its fitness for human life chiefly to its mountain ranges,
+      which, throwing the superfluous rain off as it falls, collect it in
+      streams or lakes, and guide it into given places, and in given directions;
+      so that men can build their cities in the midst of fields which they know
+      will be always fertile, and establish the lines of their commerce upon
+      streams which will not fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {22} I attach great importance to the remaining contents of this passage,
+      and have had occasion to insist on them at great length in recent lectures
+      at Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor is this giving of motion to water to be considered as confined only to
+      the surface of the earth. A no less important function of the hills is in
+      directing the flow of the fountains and springs from subterranean
+      reservoirs. There is no miraculous springing up of water out of the ground
+      at our feet; but every fountain and well is supplied from reservoirs among
+      the hills, so placed as to involve some slight fall or pressure enough to
+      secure the constant flowing of the stream; and the incalculable blessing
+      of the power given to us, in most valleys, of reaching by excavation some
+      point whence the water will rise to the surface of the ground in perennial
+      flow, is entirely owing to the concave dispositions of the beds of clay or
+      rock raised from beneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of enclosing
+      hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second great use of mountains is to maintain a constant change in the
+      currents and nature of the <i>air</i>. Such change would, of course, have
+      been partly caused by difference in soil and vegetation, even if the earth
+      had been level; but to a far less extent than it is now by the chains of
+      hills which&mdash;exposing on one side their masses of rock to the full
+      heat of the sun, (increased by the angle at which the rays strike on the
+      slope,) and on the other casting a soft shadow for leagues over the plains
+      at their feet&mdash;divide the earth not only into districts, but into
+      climates; and cause perpetual currents of air to traverse their passes in
+      a thousand different states; moistening it with the spray of their
+      waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it hither and thither in the pools
+      of their torrents, closing it within clefts and caves, where the sunbeams
+      never reach, till it is as cold as November mists; then sending it forth
+      again to breathe lightly across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be
+      scorched among sunburnt shales and grassless crags; then drawing it back
+      in moaning swirls through clefts of ice, and up into dewy wreaths above
+      the snow-fields; then piercing it with strange electric darts and flashes
+      of mountain fire, and tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the
+      dried grass is tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last,
+      when chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off plains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change in the <i>soils</i>
+      of the earth. Without such provision the ground under cultivation would in
+      a series of years become exhausted, and require to be upturned laboriously
+      by the hand of man. But the elevations of the earth's surface provide for
+      it a perpetual renovation. The higher mountains suffer their summits to be
+      broken into fragments, and to be cast down in sheets of massy rock, full,
+      as we shall see presently, of every substance necessary for the
+      nourishment of plants; these fallen fragments are again broken by frost,
+      and ground by torrents, into various conditions of sand and clay&mdash;materials
+      which are distributed perpetually by the streams farther and farther from
+      the mountain's base. Every shower that swells the rivulet enables their
+      waters to carry certain portions of earth into new positions, and exposes
+      new banks of ground to be mined in their turn. That turbid foaming of the
+      angry water,&mdash;that tearing down of bank and rock along the flanks of
+      its fury,&mdash;are no disturbances of the kind course of nature; they are
+      beneficent operations of laws necessary to the existence of man, and to
+      the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more gently, but not
+      less effectively, over all the surface of the lower undulating country;
+      and each filtering thread of summer rain which trickles through the short
+      turf of the uplands is bearing its own appointed burden of earth to be
+      thrown down on some new natural garden in the dingles beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mountains. I do
+      not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams from the moors of
+      the higher ranges,&mdash;of the various medicinal plants which are nested
+      among their rocks,&mdash;of the delicate pasturage which they furnish for
+      cattle,&mdash;of the forests in which they bear timber for shipping,&mdash;the
+      stones they supply for building, or the ores of metal which they collect
+      into spots open to discovery, and easy for working. All these benefits are
+      of a secondary or a limited nature. But the three great functions which I
+      have just described, those of giving motion and change to water, air, and
+      earth, are indispensable to human existence; they are operations to be
+      regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as the laws which bid the tree
+      bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the earth. And thus those
+      desolate and threatening ranges of dark mountain, which in nearly all ages
+      of the world men have looked upon with aversion, or with terror, and
+      shrunk back from as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are
+      in reality sources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent
+      than all the bright fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed; the
+      mountains feed, and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of
+      fearlessness and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea; but
+      we associate them unjustly. The sea-wave, with all its beneficence, is yet
+      devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the blue mountain is lifted
+      towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy; and the one surge,
+      unfathomable in its darkness, the other unshaken in its faithfulness, for
+      ever bear the seal of their appointed symbolism:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thy <i>righteousness</i> is like the great mountains;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thy <i>judgments</i> are a great deep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      33. Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent
+      muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its
+      anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive
+      energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the
+      lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when
+      its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty,&mdash;yet
+      ruling those lines in their every undulation. This then is the first grand
+      principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit of the hills is action,
+      that of the lowlands repose; and between these there is to be found every
+      variety of motion and rest, from the inactive plain, sleeping like the
+      firmament, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heaving
+      bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting like hair from their
+      bright foreheads, lift up their Titan heads to Heaven, saying, "I live for
+      ever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      34. Where they are,{23} they seem to form the world; no mere bank of a
+      river here, or of a lane there, peeping out among the hedges or forests,
+      but from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is theirs,&mdash;one
+      adamantine dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield ourselves to the
+      impression of their eternal unconquerable stubbornness of strength; their
+      mass seems the least yielding, least to be softened, or in anywise dealt
+      with by external force, of all earthly substance. And behold, as we look
+      further into it, it is all touched and troubled, like waves by a summer
+      breeze; rippled far more delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; <i>they</i>
+      only undulate along their surfaces&mdash;this rock trembles through its
+      every fibre, like the chords of an Eolian harp, like the stillest air of
+      spring, with the echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those
+      great mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep
+      beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering of
+      their substance. Other and weaker things seem to express their subjection
+      to an Infinite Power only by momentary terrors: as the weeds bow down
+      before the feverish wind, and the sound of the going in the tops of the
+      taller trees passes on before the clouds, and the fitful opening of pale
+      spaces on the dark water, as if some invisible hand were casting dust
+      abroad upon it, gives warning of the anger that is to come, we may well
+      imagine that there is a fear passing upon the grass, and leaves, and
+      waters, at the presence of some great spirit commissioned to let the
+      tempest loose; but the terror passes, and their sweet rest is perpetually
+      restored to the pastures and the waves. Not so to the mountains. They,
+      which at first seem strengthened beyond the dread of any violence or
+      change, are yet also ordained to bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual
+      fear. The tremor which fades from the soft lake and gliding river is
+      sealed to all eternity upon the rock; and while things that pass visibly
+      from birth to death may sometimes forget their feebleness, the mountains
+      are made to possess a perpetual memorial of their infancy&mdash;that
+      infancy which the prophet saw in his vision,{24}&mdash;"I beheld the
+      earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they
+      had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they <i>trembled</i>, and
+      all the hills moved <i>lightly</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {23} Passage written after I had got by some years cooler and wiser than
+      when I wrote No. 33, describing however the undulation of the gneiss
+      rocks, which, 'where they are, seem, to form the world,' in terms more
+      fanciful than I now like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {24} Utter misinterpretation of the passage. It is the old age, not the
+      childhood of earth, which Jeremiah describes in this passage. See its true
+      interpretation in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XLVI. &mdash; 35. The longer I
+      stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I examined them, the more I
+      was struck by the one broad fact of there being a vast Alpine plateau, or
+      mass of elevated land, upon which nearly all the highest peaks stood like
+      children set upon a table, removed, in most cases, far back from the edge
+      of the plateau,&mdash;as if for fear of their falling; while the most
+      majestic scenes in the Alps are produced, not so much by any violation of
+      this law, as by one of the great peaks having apparently walked to the
+      edge of the table to look over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the
+      valley in its full height. This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger
+      at Grindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse above the Col de Ferret. But
+      the raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in
+      these apparently exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great peaks
+      are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain like the keeps of
+      castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by comparatively
+      level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe
+      and flow, foaming about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf
+      of an enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding some
+      fragment of it in the midst. And the result of this arrangement is a kind
+      of division of the whole of Switzerland into an upper and lower mountain
+      world,&mdash;the lower world consisting of rich valleys, bordered by
+      steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks of mountain, more or less
+      divided by ravines, through which glimpses are caught of the higher Alps;
+      the upper world, reached after the first banks of 3,000 or 4,000 feet in
+      height have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most
+      desolate tracts of moor and rock, half covered by glacier, and stretching
+      to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain. It can hardly be necessary
+      to point out the perfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement, as a
+      provision for the safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions.
+      If the great peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone
+      which was struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped
+      from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground, over
+      which no year would pass without recording some calamity of earth-slip or
+      avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the stones and the snow
+      would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving only naked channels of
+      destruction where there are now the sloping meadow and the chestnut glade.
+      Besides this, the masses of snow, cast down at once into the warmer air,
+      would all melt rapidly in the spring, causing furious inundation of every
+      great river for a month or six weeks. The snow being then all thawed,
+      except what lay upon the highest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual
+      frost, the rivers would be supplied during the summer only by fountains,
+      and the feeble tricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone,
+      under such circumstances, would hardly be larger, in summer, than the
+      Severn, and many Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All
+      these calamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has
+      been described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high peaks,
+      instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon the desolate
+      shelves, or shoulders, which everywhere surround the central crests. The
+      soft banks which terminate these shelves, traversed by no falling
+      fragments, clothe themselves with richest wood, while the masses of snow
+      heaped upon the ledge above them, in a climate neither so warm as to thaw
+      them quickly in the spring, nor so cold as to protect them from all the
+      power of the summer sun, either form themselves into glaciers, or remain
+      in slowly wasting fields even to the close of the year,&mdash;in either
+      case supplying constant, abundant, and regular streams to the villages and
+      pastures beneath, and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,{25} is indeed
+      sufficient reason for its existence, and to many people it may seem
+      useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can hardly
+      conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers of central
+      rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the actual first
+      work of the Divine Master, on which I gaze? Was the great precipice shaped
+      by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust? Were its clefts and
+      ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on the tables of
+      the law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal testimony to His
+      beneficence among these clouds of Heaven? Or is it the descendant of a
+      long race of mountains, existing under appointed laws of birth and
+      endurance, death and decrepitude? There can be no doubt as to the answer.
+      The rock itself answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or
+      rending pinnacle. It is <i>not</i> as it was once. Those waste leagues
+      around its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these
+      perhaps, of all mountains, the characters of decay are written most
+      clearly; around these are spread most gloomily the memorials of their
+      pride, and the signs of their humiliation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {25} Of course I had seen every other tried before giving this favourable
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What then were they once? The only answer is yet again&mdash;"Behold the
+      cloud!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      36. There are many spots among the inferior ridges of the Alps, such as
+      the Col de Ferret, the Col d'Anterne, and the associated ranges of the
+      Buet, which, though commanding prospects of great nobleness, are
+      themselves very nearly types of all that is most painful to the human
+      mind. Vast wastes of mountain ground,{26} covered here and there with dull
+      grey grass or moss, but breaking continually into black banks of shattered
+      slate, all glistening and sodden with slow tricklings of clogged,
+      incapable streams; the snow-water oozing through them in a cold sweat, and
+      spreading itself in creeping stains among their dust; ever and anon a
+      shaking here and there, and a handful or two of their particles or flakes
+      trembling down, one sees not why, into more total dissolution, leaving a
+      few jagged teeth, like the edges of knives eaten away by vinegar,
+      projecting, through the half-dislodged mass, from the inner rock; keen
+      enough to cut the hand or foot that rests on them, yet crumbling as they
+      wound, and soon sinking again into the smooth, slippery, glutinous heap;
+      looking like a beach of black scales of dead fish cast ashore from a
+      poisonous sea, and sloping away into foul ravines, branched down
+      immeasurable slopes of barrenness, where the winds howl and wander
+      continually, and the snow lies in wasted and sorrowful fields covered with
+      sooty dust, that collects in streaks and stains at the bottom of all its
+      thawing ripples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {26} This is a fourth volume passage,&mdash;and I will venture to say of
+      it, as Albert Dürer, when he was pleased with his work&mdash;that for what
+      it has to do, it cannot be much better done. It is a study on the Col de
+      Bon Homme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know of no other scenes so appalling as these in storm, or so woful in
+      sunshine. Where, however, these same rocks exist in more favourable
+      positions&mdash;that is to say, in gentler banks and at lower elevations&mdash;they
+      form a ground for the most luxuriant vegetation; and the valleys of Savoy
+      owe to them some of their loveliest solitudes&mdash;exquisitely rich
+      pastures, interspersed with arable and orchard land, and shaded by groves
+      of walnut and cherry. Scenes of this kind, and of that just described, so
+      singularly opposed, and apparently brought together as foils to each
+      other, are however peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which
+      are both vast in elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland
+      the same groups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain
+      less elevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery.
+      The severity of the climate, and the comparative durableness of the rock,
+      forbid the rich vegetation; but the exposed summits, though barren, are
+      not subject to laws of destruction so rapid and fearful as in Switzerland,
+      and the natural colour of the rock is oftener developed in the purples and
+      greys which, mingled with the heather, form the principal elements of the
+      deep and beautiful distant blue of the British hills. Their gentler
+      mountain streams also permit the beds of rock to remain in firm, though
+      fantastic, forms along their banks, and the gradual action of the cascades
+      and eddies upon the slaty cleavage produces many pieces of foreground
+      scenery to which higher hills can present no parallel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      37. Unlike Chamouni Aiguilles, there is no aspect of destruction about the
+      Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating spires,
+      yielding, flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual process of
+      decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument, seemingly
+      sculptured long ago, the huge walls retaining yet the forms into which
+      they were first engraven, and standing like an Egyptian temple;&mdash;delicately
+      fronted, softly coloured, the suns of uncounted ages rising and falling
+      upon it continually, but still casting the same line of shadows from east
+      to west; still, century after century, touching the same purple stains on
+      the lotus pillars; while the desert sand ebbs and flows about their feet,
+      as those autumn leaves of rock lie heaped and weak about the base of the
+      Cervin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is not this a strange type in the very heart and height of these
+      mysterious Alps&mdash;these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold,
+      grey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at their
+      feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously in broken and dreaming
+      fits, as it were, about their childhood,&mdash;is it not a strange type of
+      the things which "out of weakness are made strong"? If one of these little
+      flakes of mica sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along the bottom of
+      the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to float, almost too small
+      for sight, could have had a mind given to it as it was at last borne down
+      with its kindred dust into the abysses of the stream, and laid, (might it
+      not have been thought?) for a hopeless eternity, in the dark ooze, the
+      most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of
+      any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much
+      as to help an earth wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a
+      lichen; what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted
+      into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by
+      the flame, out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God
+      should hew that Alpine tower?&mdash;that against <i>it</i>&mdash;poor,
+      helpless mica flake!&mdash;the wild north winds should rage in vain;
+      beneath <i>it</i>&mdash;low-fallen mica flake!&mdash;the snowy hills
+      should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade
+      away in unregarded blue; and around <i>it</i>&mdash;weak, wave-drifted
+      mica flake!&mdash;the great war of the firmament should burst in thunder
+      and yet stir it not; and the fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night
+      fall blunted back from it into the air; and all the stars in the clear
+      heaven should light, one by one as they rose, new cressets upon the points
+      of snow that fringed its abiding-place on the imperishable spire?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION VI. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than out
+      of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a patient
+      observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to some extent
+      without patience, and are pleasant even in being half seen. Trees, clouds,
+      and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his
+      foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but stumbling; no pleasure is
+      languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but
+      symbolism of the hard heart, and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give
+      it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it,
+      more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone,
+      when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness
+      of Nature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in
+      diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a
+      small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking
+      moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone
+      in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than the surface
+      of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in
+      colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      39. On a Highland hillside are multitudinous clusters of fern and heather;
+      on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. The number of
+      the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter
+      case far greater, because the number is of nobler things. Indeed, so far
+      as mere magnitude of space occupied on the field of the horizon is the
+      measure of objects, a bank of earth ten feet high may, if we stoop to the
+      foot of it, be made to occupy just as much of the sky as that bank of
+      mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in many respects, its little ravines and
+      escarpments, watched with some help of imagination, may become very
+      sufficiently representative to us of those of the great mountain; and in
+      classing all water-worn mountain ground under the general and humble term
+      of Banks, I mean to imply this relationship of structure between the
+      smallest eminences and the highest. But in this matter of superimposed <i>quantity</i>,
+      the distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of earth bears its
+      few tufts of moss, or knots of grass; the Highland or Cumberland mountain,
+      its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the bank at
+      Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its rocks, and a
+      chestnut grove on every crest of them.... The minute mounds and furrows
+      scattered up the side of that great promontory, when they are actually
+      approached after three or four hours' climbing, turn into independent
+      hills, with true <i>parks</i> of lovely pasture-land enclosed among them,
+      and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts, and pines bending round
+      their bases; while in the deeper dingles, populous villages, literally
+      bound down to the rock by enormous trunks of vine, which, first trained
+      lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in process of years cast their
+      fruitful net over the whole village, and fastened it to the ground under
+      their purple weight and wayward coils as securely as ever human heart was
+      fastened to earth by the net of the Flatterer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      40. When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather,
+      Nature finishes it in her own way. First she takes wonderful pains about
+      its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dent and dimple, and
+      rounding or hollowing it into contours which for fineness no human hand
+      can follow; then she colours it; and every one of her touches of colour,
+      instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living
+      trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of
+      structure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      41. On the broken rocks in the foreground in the crystalline groups, the
+      mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the task of
+      producing the most exquisite harmonies of colour in their power. They will
+      not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather over it in little brown
+      bosses, like small cushions of velvet, made of mixed threads of dark ruby
+      silk and gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and grey, with
+      lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen leaves, and
+      minute clusters of upright orange stalks with pointed caps, and fibres of
+      deep green, and gold, and faint purple passing into black, all woven
+      together, and following with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the
+      undulation of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so
+      that it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or
+      stern, or anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be
+      clothed with a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque of
+      purple and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      42. The colour of the white varieties of marble is of exquisite delicacy,
+      owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock; and it has always
+      appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance&mdash;one of the most <i>marked</i>
+      pieces of purpose in the creation&mdash;that all the variegated kinds
+      should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on the
+      surface, while the white, which, if it had been opaque, would have looked
+      somewhat coarse, (as for instance common chalk does,) is rendered just
+      translucent enough to give an impression of extreme purity, but not so
+      translucent as to interfere in the least with the distinctness of any
+      forms into which it is wrought. The colours of variegated marbles are also
+      for the most part very beautiful, especially those composed of purple,
+      amber, and green, with white; and there seems something notably attractive
+      to the human mind in the <i>vague</i> and veined labyrinths of their
+      arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      43. I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of
+      brilliancy of colour with vigour of life or purity of substance. This is
+      pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with which
+      the particles of any substance unite in crystallization, corresponds in
+      that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature; and it is a universal
+      law, that according to the purity of any substance, and according to the
+      energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or brightness. Pure earths
+      are white when in powder; and the same earths, which are the constituents
+      of clay and sand, form, when crystallized, the emerald, ruby, sapphire,
+      amethyst, and opal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      44. As we pass between the hills which have been shaken by earthquake and
+      torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed those
+      of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen
+      rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows;
+      the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church tower,
+      white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed appeal to His
+      protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the
+      strength of the hills is His also." There is no loveliness of Alpine
+      valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is just where "the mountain
+      falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place," that
+      in process of years the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the
+      clearest rivulets murmur from between their crevices among the flowers,
+      and the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy
+      stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around
+      them, safe from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon
+      their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient
+      promise,&mdash;"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction, when it
+      cometh; for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the
+      beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION VII. &mdash; ILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND FLOWERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      45. Wonderful, in universal adaptation to man's need, desire, and
+      discipline, God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful
+      means of life. First, a carpet, to make it soft for him; then a coloured
+      fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade
+      him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry
+      quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the
+      moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to be cut, yet tough and
+      light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or
+      plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it had been if harder;
+      useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic. Winter comes, and the
+      shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the strong
+      boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are
+      to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful
+      and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or
+      provision for his service; cold juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or
+      incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge,
+      or lulling charm; and all these presented in forms of endless change.
+      Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects;
+      unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of
+      feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
+      the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer
+      streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience
+      of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by
+      dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled
+      fields beneath every wave of ocean&mdash;clothing with variegated,
+      everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering, at
+      cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift by
+      in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty
+      monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the
+      avenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,&mdash;so
+      eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the glory of
+      the earth,&mdash;they are but the monuments of those poor leaves that flit
+      faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our understanding their
+      last counsel and example: that we also, careless of monument by the grave,
+      may build it in the world&mdash;monument by which men may be taught to
+      remember, not where we died, but where we lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other trees,
+      tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it
+      with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers,
+      partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance,
+      self-contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine
+      cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of
+      pines, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the
+      enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside
+      it&mdash;upright, fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the
+      walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb for ever. You cannot reach
+      them, cannot cry to them: those trees never heard human voice; they are
+      far above all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of
+      theirs: all comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of the
+      Vacancy and the Rock; yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks
+      bent and shattered beside them,&mdash;fragile, weak, inconsistent,
+      compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted
+      pride&mdash;unnumbered, unconquerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then note farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's minds
+      must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can
+      judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in
+      health is green and full <i>roundness</i>. It stands compact, like one of
+      its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a
+      carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of being wild in
+      expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for other trees show
+      their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine, growing either in
+      luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen. Summit
+      behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep
+      the circlets of its boughs; so that there is nothing but green cone, and
+      green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one sense more cheerful than
+      other foliage, for it casts only a pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches
+      overhead, and chequers the ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in
+      scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is
+      all its own; narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to
+      the dew. And if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine
+      glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but it is
+      only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our English
+      meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest pine-glade in
+      Chamouni, "Fairies' Hollow." It is in the glen beneath the steep ascent
+      above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding path which
+      goes down from the top of the hill{27}&mdash;being indeed not truly a
+      glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a formidable
+      precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over the Arve. An
+      almost isolated rock promontory, many coloured, rises at the end of it. On
+      the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which a little cascade
+      falls, literally, down among the pines, for it is so light, shaking itself
+      into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it
+      from mist, and grow through it without minding. Underneath, there is only
+      the mossy silence; and above, for ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {27} The new road to Chamouni has been carried right through it. A cascade
+      on the right, as you ascend, marks the place spoken of in the text,&mdash;once
+      as lonely as Corrie-nan-shian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this, in fringes.
+      You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for this reason,&mdash;it
+      alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the fiery change which has
+      been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises behind a ridge crested
+      with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance of about two miles, and
+      seen clear, all the trees, for about three or four degrees on each side of
+      the sun, become trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker
+      sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first this was owing to
+      the actual lustre of the leaves; but I believe now it is caused by the
+      cloud-dew upon them&mdash;every minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It
+      seems as if these trees, living always among the clouds, had caught part
+      of their glory from them; and themselves, the darkest of vegetation, could
+      yet add splendour to the sun itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      48. The Swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in
+      anywise correspondent with ours. It was rather as fortresses of defence,
+      than as spectacles of splendour, that the cliffs of the Rothslock bare
+      rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their feet; and the training
+      for which the mountain children had to thank the slopes of the
+      Muotta-Thal, was in soundness of breath, and steadiness of limb, far more
+      than in elevation of idea. But the point which I desire the reader to note
+      is, that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been
+      impressive to the inhabitant, is not that which we ourselves feel when we
+      enter the district. It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor
+      their glaciers&mdash;though these were all peculiarly their possessions&mdash;that
+      the three venerable cantons received their name. They were not called the
+      States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the <i>Forest</i>.
+      And the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the
+      spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the 'Hill
+      of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name of 'Under
+      the Woods.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in
+      Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman row
+      southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest there on
+      its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven. Far in the blue
+      of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the lake in its
+      darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters
+      return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices of a multitude
+      praying under their breath. From time to time the beat of a wave, slow
+      lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last
+      note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass, and set with châlet
+      villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and
+      peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray
+      precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden
+      pine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna
+      the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or
+      two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct, lighting up
+      the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of Chaos. But as I climbed the
+      long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and
+      the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and graceful darkness of its
+      ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the
+      upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in
+      deep palpitating azure, half æther and half dew. The noonday sun came
+      slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled
+      and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of
+      a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it, as with rain. I cannot
+      call it colour,&mdash;it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and
+      scarlet, like the curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank
+      into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with
+      buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit
+      the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses
+      of the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of
+      some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their banks
+      for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around
+      them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand separate stars,
+      fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall.
+      Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in
+      sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and closed above it, as
+      sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark
+      rock, dark though flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows
+      across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its
+      marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound; and, over all, the
+      multitudinous bars of amber and rose&mdash;the sacred clouds that have no
+      darkness, and only exist to illumine&mdash;were seen in fathomless
+      intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing
+      to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless
+      line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity: children
+      love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as they grow;
+      luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered; they are the
+      cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little
+      broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose hearts
+      rests the covenant of peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond of
+      finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares about a
+      kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in the
+      greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are
+      scientifically interested in them, though even these in the nomenclature,
+      rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their gardens.... But, the
+      blossoming time of the year being principally spring, I perceive it to be
+      the mind of most people, during that period, to stay in towns. A year or
+      two ago a keen-sighted and eccentrically-minded friend of mine, having
+      taken it into his head to violate this national custom, and go to the
+      Tyrol in spring, was passing through a valley near Landech with several
+      similarly headstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the
+      distance, belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English
+      Queen. Was it a blue cloud, a blue horizontal bar of the air that Titian
+      breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe
+      again? Was it a mirage&mdash;a meteor? Would it stay to be approached?&mdash;(ten
+      miles of winding road yet between them and the foot of the mountain)&mdash;such
+      questioning had they concerning it. My keen-sighted friend, alone,
+      maintained it to be substantial;&mdash;whatever it might be, it was not
+      air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of road were overpast, the
+      carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed patiently, expanding still
+      into richer breath and heavenlier glow&mdash;a belt of gentians. Such
+      things may verily be seen among the Alps in spring, and in spring only;
+      which being so, I observe most people prefer going in autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      52. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a rose
+      so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will find,
+      first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the loveliest of all
+      pure colours; and, secondly, that in the rose there is <i>no shadow</i>,
+      except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are fuller in colour
+      than its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective power of the
+      leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      53. Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of
+      volatile substance? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a
+      rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the air
+      continually!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      54. In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be found
+      more perfectly beautiful, than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm
+      light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness; its
+      surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light and shade of
+      inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish,&mdash;the shadows sharp,
+      pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and
+      multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted
+      light.... If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it upon the lower Alps,
+      early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little
+      round openings pierced in it; and through these, emergent, a slender,
+      pensive, fragile flower,{28} whose small, dark, purple-fringed bell hangs
+      down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly
+      wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after
+      its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we ought to be, moved by a totally
+      different impression of loveliness from that which we receive among the
+      dead ice and the idle clouds: there is now uttered to us a call for
+      sympathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and achievement,
+      which, however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be that so
+      seems to call, cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated without
+      worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is
+      clearly and surely sighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {28} Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which
+      actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed
+      hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or two.
+      But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its fields. I
+      have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found
+      alone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such soil
+      is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of existing on
+      it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. Now
+      if we withdraw the plant from this position, which it hardly endures, and
+      supply it with the earth and maintain about it the temperature that it
+      delights in; withdrawing from it, at the same time, all rivals, which in
+      such conditions Nature would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a
+      magnificently developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and
+      splendid in organization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal
+      which is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It
+      was intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely
+      spots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed with
+      courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character and glory
+      are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its own over
+      luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly destroyed and rooted
+      out for its good alone; but in its right doing of its hard duty, and
+      forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope where it alone can bear
+      witness to the kindness and presence of the Spirit that cutteth out rivers
+      among the rocks, as He covers the valleys with corn; and there, in its
+      vanward place, and only there, where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt
+      by it, and where nothing can take part of its honour, nor usurp its
+      throne, are its strength and fairness, and price, and goodness in the
+      sight of God to be truly esteemed. The first time I saw the Soldanella
+      Alpina, before spoken of, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny
+      Alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated
+      with a profusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenæus. I noticed it
+      only because new to me&mdash;nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its
+      cloven flower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the
+      higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds; and, as I described it,
+      piercing through an edge of avalanche which in its retiring had left the
+      new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burnt by recent fire. The plant
+      was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its efforts,&mdash;but
+      it was then that I comprehended its ideal character, and saw its noble
+      function and order of glory among the constellations of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      56. GRASSES.&mdash;Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels,
+      mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain,
+      with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and
+      softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore,
+      not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but with the shaking
+      threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grainbells, all
+      a-chime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      57. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly its
+      narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems, there of
+      notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very little
+      tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point,&mdash;not a
+      perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable
+      or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's workmanship, made, only
+      to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven,&mdash;and
+      a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the
+      dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether,
+      of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and
+      goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes, or good for food,&mdash;stately palm
+      and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine&mdash;there be
+      any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point
+      of feeble green. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe
+      merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that
+      glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and
+      peaceful spears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the
+      thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and
+      summer is in them&mdash;the walks by silent, scented paths&mdash;the rests
+      in noonday heat,&mdash;the joy of herds and flocks,&mdash;the power of all
+      shepherd life and meditation,&mdash;the life of sunlight upon the world
+      falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it
+      would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside
+      the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of
+      down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all dim with
+      early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy
+      feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices,&mdash;all
+      these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not
+      measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in our own land,
+      though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow
+      sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more; yet
+      we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime among the meadows that
+      slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower
+      mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians, and the white
+      narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding
+      mountain path, beneath arching boughs, all veiled with blossom&mdash;paths
+      that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down
+      in scented undulation steep to the blue water, studded here and there with
+      new-mown heaps filling all the air with fainter sweetness,&mdash;look up
+      towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll
+      silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may
+      perhaps at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm,
+      "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all, from
+      Isaiah xl. 6, we find the grass and flowers are types, in their passing,
+      of the passing of human life, and in their excellence, of the excellence
+      of human life; and this in twofold way: first by their beneficence, and
+      then by their endurance&mdash;the grass of the earth, in giving the seed
+      of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and
+      the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its
+      bending before the wave. But, understood in the broad human and Divine
+      sense, the "<i>herb</i> yielding seed"&mdash;(as opposed to the fruit tree
+      yielding fruit)&mdash;includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a
+      third office to the human race. It includes the great family of the lints
+      and flaxes, and fulfils thus the <i>three</i> offices of giving food,
+      raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; consider the association of
+      the linen garment and the linen embroidery with the priestly office and
+      the furniture of the tabernacle, and consider how the rush has been to all
+      time the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. Then next
+      observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of
+      plants&mdash;not arbitrarily or fancifully associated with them, but in
+      all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness,
+      or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and beauty&mdash;"Consider the
+      lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."
+      2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest&mdash;"A bruised reed shall he not
+      break." 3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing, (because of its swift
+      kindling,)&mdash;"The smoking flax shall he not quench." And then finally
+      observe the confirmation of these last two images in, I suppose, the most
+      important prophecy, relating to the future state of the Christian Church,
+      which occurs in the Old Testament, namely that contained in the closing
+      chapters of Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken;
+      and because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever
+      can be taken, the angel has "a line of <i>flax</i> in his hand, and a
+      measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the
+      reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of the
+      church, or its labours, are to be measured by humility; and its territory,
+      or land, by love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      58. LEAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak
+      grasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth with a
+      peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock, moveless as
+      they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low rays of morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      59. MOSSES.&mdash;Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling
+      with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity, covering
+      with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet
+      finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No words, that I know
+      of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, none perfect
+      enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of
+      furred and beaming green,&mdash;the starred divisions of rubied bloom,
+      fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass,&mdash;the
+      traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous,
+      arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and
+      glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed
+      for simplest, sweetest offices of grace? They will not be gathered, like
+      the flowers, for chaplet, or love-token; but of these the wild bird will
+      make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when all
+      other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray
+      lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the
+      gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time; but these do
+      service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's
+      chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      60. LICHENS.&mdash;As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the
+      most honoured of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm
+      frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they
+      neither blanch in heat, nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered,
+      constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal tapestries
+      of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of
+      their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock,
+      they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring
+      scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on
+      the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold,&mdash;far above,
+      among the mountains, the silver lichen spots rest, star-like, on the
+      stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon the edge of yonder western
+      peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION VIII. &mdash; EDUCATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      61. The most helpful and sacred work which can at present be done for
+      humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching
+      must be done) not how "to better themselves," but how to "satisfy
+      themselves." It is the curse of every evil nature and evil creature to eat
+      and <i>not</i> be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall
+      eat and be satisfied; and as there is only one kind of water which
+      quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies
+      all hunger&mdash;the bread of justice or righteousness; which hungering
+      after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of Heaven; but
+      hungering after the bread or wages of unrighteousness, shall not be
+      filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And in order to teach men how to be
+      satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art of joy and humble
+      life&mdash;this, at present, of all arts or sciences, being the one most
+      needing study. Humble life; that is to say, proposing to itself no future
+      exaltation, but only a sweet continuance: not excluding the idea of
+      foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for
+      coming days; so also not excluding the idea of providence or provision,
+      but wholly of accumulation;&mdash;the life of domestic affection and
+      domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind
+      pleasure;&mdash;therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      62. We shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed, has
+      been a faithful and sacred element of feeling; that is to say, supposing
+      all the circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two individuals,
+      the one who loves nature most will be always found to have more capacity
+      for <i>faith</i> in God than the other. Nature-worship will be found to
+      bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a Great Spirit as
+      no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and where that
+      nature-worship is innocently pursued&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, with due respect
+      to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated with the
+      higher principles of religion,&mdash;it becomes the channel of certain
+      sacred truths, which by no other means can be conveyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      63. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with the
+      faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected properly with the
+      benevolence and liberty{29} of the age; that it is precisely the most
+      healthy element which distinctively belongs to us; and that out of it,
+      cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness and as a
+      duty, results will spring of an importance at present inconceivable; and
+      lights arise, which, for the first time in man's history, will reveal to
+      him the true nature of his life, the true field for his energies, and the
+      true relations between him and his Maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {29} I forget, now, what I meant by 'liberty' in this passage; but I often
+      used the word in my first writings, in a good sense, thinking of Scott's
+      moorland rambles and the like. It is very wonderful to me, now, to see
+      what hopes I had once: but Turner was alive, then; and the sun used to
+      shine, and rivers to sparkle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      64. To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk, over not
+      more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of all
+      travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its
+      rapidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely
+      "being sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      65. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of the
+      upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavouring, however
+      clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily exert in
+      amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for instance,
+      that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over other people's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      66. In order to define what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair;
+      and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight.
+      Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be
+      understood; now I cannot, any more, for it seems to me that no one regards
+      them. Wherever I look or travel, in England or abroad, I see that men,
+      wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other
+      desire or hope but to have large houses, and be able to move fast. Every
+      perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile. Thus the
+      railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen, and that round the Clarens
+      shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the power of two pieces of
+      scenery of which nothing can ever supply the place, in appeal to the
+      higher ranks of European mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      67. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being taken
+      by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. The intense joy,
+      mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the hollows in the mossy
+      roots, over the crag into the dark lake, has associated itself more or
+      less with all twining roots of trees ever since. Two other things I
+      remember as, in a sort, beginnings of life;&mdash;crossing Shap-fells,
+      being let out of the chaise to run up the hills; and going through
+      Glenfarg, near Kinross, on a winter's morning, when the rocks were hung
+      with icicles; these being culminating points in an early life of more
+      travelling than is usually indulged to a child. In such journeyings,
+      whenever they brought me near hills, and in all mountain ground and
+      scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as I can remember, and continuing till
+      I was eighteen or twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since
+      possible to me in anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      68. A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to
+      lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and time; a wise man, first to
+      gain them, then to animate them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      69. I suspect that system-makers in general are not of much more use, each
+      in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries
+      upon sticks, for the more portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and
+      choose well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had
+      in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalks, it is a
+      better connection for them than any others; and if they cannot, then so
+      that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of practical disposition not
+      much difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on
+      the exalting stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      70. Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is
+      to get good out of all things and all persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      71. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and if
+      they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and
+      faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold
+      and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as,
+      in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of
+      service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must always
+      be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which
+      is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his
+      race for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      72. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it is
+      capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that unity is
+      its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the beholding of all
+      other creatures that can behold. So the unity of spirits is partly in
+      their sympathy, and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their
+      love; and these are their delight and their strength; for their strength
+      is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in their
+      giving and receiving of alternate and perpetual good; their inseparable
+      dependency on each other's being, and their essential and perfect
+      depending on their Creator's. And so the unity of earthly creatures is
+      their power, and their peace; not like the dead and cold peace of
+      undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust,
+      and the living power of support; of hands that hold each other and are
+      still.{30}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {30} A long, affected, and obscure second volume sentence, written in
+      imitation of Hooker. One short sentence from Ecclesiastes is the sum of
+      it: "How can one be warm alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      73. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis of
+      Assisi, who spoke never to bird, nor to cicada, nor even to wolf and
+      beasts of prey, but as his brother;&mdash;and so we find are moved the
+      minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the
+      'Mariner' of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the
+      'Hartleap Well'&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
+  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and again in the 'White Doe' of Rylstone, with the added teaching, that
+      anguish of our own
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  "Is tempered and allayed by sympathies
+  Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
+  Even to the inferior kinds;"&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic
+      faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect,{31}
+      than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself cat, tiger,
+      leopard, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of
+      cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes sparingly and at
+      intervals use against each other for their necessities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {31} I am more and more grieved, as I re-read this and other portions of
+      the most affected and weak of all my books, (written in a moulting time of
+      my life,)&mdash;the second volume of 'Modern Painters,'&mdash;at its
+      morbid violence of passion and narrowness of thought. Yet, at heart, the
+      book was, like my others, honest; and in substance it is mostly good; but
+      all boiled to rags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      74. He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath
+      his feet, nor the creatures which live not for his uses, filling those
+      spaces in the universe which he needs not: while, on the other hand, none
+      can love God, nor his human brother, without loving all things which his
+      Father loves; nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect
+      his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if, in the under concords
+      they have to fill, their part is touched more truly.{32}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {32} Morbidly Franciscan, again! and I am really compelled to leave out
+      one little bit my friend liked,&mdash;as all kindly and hopeful women
+      would,&mdash;about everything turning out right, and being to some good
+      end. For we have no business whatever with the ends of things, but with
+      their beings; and their beings are often entirely bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      75. Things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never <i>completely</i>.
+      No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more
+      and more of it the longer we look. Every individual temper will see
+      something different in it; but supposing the tempers honest, all the
+      differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness of perception will
+      show us something new; but the old and first-discerned thing will still be
+      there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the new perceptions,
+      becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them, and more
+      approved as a part of the infinite truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SECTION IX. &mdash; MORALITIES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      76. When people read, "The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by
+      Christ," do they suppose it means that the law was ungracious and untrue?
+      The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and truth for
+      fulfilment;&mdash;the whole forming one glorious Trinity of judgment,
+      mercy, and truth.{33} And if people would but read the text of their
+      Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of
+      superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they are
+      intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is always the
+      Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting mercy are
+      often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost; but those respecting the
+      Law are always full of delight. David cannot contain himself for joy in
+      thinking of it,&mdash;he is never weary of its praise: "How love I Thy
+      law! it is my meditation all the day. Thy testimonies are my delight and
+      my counsellors; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {33} A great deal of the presumption and narrowness caused by my having
+      been bred in the Evangelical schools, and which now fill me with shame and
+      distress in re-reading 'Modern Painters,' is, to my present mind, atoned
+      for by the accurate thinking by which I broke my way through to the great
+      truth expressed in this passage, which all my later writings, without
+      exception, have been directed to maintain and illustrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      77. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which, in
+      hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know the
+      close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling upon every
+      syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing Himself to His
+      disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something pre-eminently open,
+      natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this manifestation. The others,
+      recorded after the resurrection, were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to
+      men in profound sorrow and wearied agitation of heart; not, it might seem,
+      safe judges of what they saw. But the agitation was now over. They had
+      gone back to their daily work, thinking still their business lay
+      net-wards, unmeshed from the literal rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith
+      unto them, I go a-fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee." True
+      words enough, and having far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night
+      they caught nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it,
+      behold! a figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything
+      but their fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them
+      simply if they had caught anything. They say, No, and it tells them to
+      cast again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his hand to
+      look who it is; and though the glistening of the sea, too, dazzles him, he
+      makes out who it is at last; and poor Simon, not to be outrun this time,
+      tightens his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in over the nets. One
+      would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger to his
+      knees upon the beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as men
+      in general do get in this world to its true shore, much impeded by that
+      wonderful "dragging the net with fishes"; but they get there&mdash;seven
+      of them in all; first the Denier, and then the slowest believer, and then
+      the quickest believer, and then the two throne-seekers, and two more, we
+      know not who.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sit down on the shore, face to face with Him, and eat their broiled
+      fish as He bids. And then to Peter, all dripping still, shivering, and
+      amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side of the coal-fire,&mdash;thinking
+      a little perhaps of what happened by another coal-fire, when it was
+      colder, and having had no word changed with him by his Master, since that
+      look of His,&mdash;to him so amazed, comes the question, "Simon, lovest
+      thou Me?" Try to feel that a little; and think of it till it is true to
+      you: and then take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy,&mdash;Raphael's
+      cartoon of the charge to Peter. Note first the bold fallacy&mdash;the
+      putting <i>all</i> the Apostles there, a mere lie to serve the Papal
+      heresy of the Petric supremacy, by putting them all in the background
+      while Peter receives the charge, and making them all witnesses to it. Note
+      the handsomely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been
+      out all night in the sea-mists, and on the slimy decks; note their
+      convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along
+      the ground, and goodly fringes&mdash;all made to match;&mdash;an apostolic
+      fishing costume. Note how Peter especially, (whose chief glory was in his
+      wet coat <i>girt</i> about him, and naked limbs,) is enveloped in folds
+      and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals
+      at all, nor lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full
+      of villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the
+      whole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would have been
+      naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may be shown. The
+      simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our belief
+      of the whole thing taken away. There is visibly no possibility of that
+      group even having existed, in any place, or on any occasion. It is all a
+      mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and
+      curly heads of Greek philosophers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      78. Among the children of God, there is always that fearful and bowed
+      apprehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to Him
+      which is called the Fear of God; yet of real and essential fear there is
+      not any, but clinging of confidence to Him as their Rock, Fortress, and
+      Deliverer; and perfect love, and casting out of fear; so that it is not
+      possible that, while the mind is rightly bent on Him, there should be
+      dread of anything earthly or supernatural; and the more dreadful seems the
+      height of His majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of
+      it. "Of whom shall I be afraid?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      79. If for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a claim
+      upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God's demands from them, we
+      could substitute a display of His kindness to them; if side by side with
+      every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and promises of
+      immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of an awful Deity,
+      which men, though they cannot, and dare not deny, are always unwilling,
+      sometimes unable to conceive, we were to show them a near, visible,
+      inevitable, but all beneficent Deity, whose presence makes the earth
+      itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf children sitting in the
+      market-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      80. If not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with what
+      divine lines and light the exercise of godliness and charity will mould
+      and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness
+      their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not any virtue
+      the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness
+      upon the features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      81. The love of the human race is increased by their individual
+      differences, and the unity of the creature, made perfect by each having
+      something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a thousand
+      various necessities and various gratitudes; humility in each rejoicing to
+      admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself, and each being in
+      some respect the complement of his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      82. They who are as the angels of God in heaven, yet cannot be conceived
+      as so assimilated that their different experiences and affections upon
+      earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the child, taken early to
+      his place, cannot be imagined to wear there such a body, nor to have such
+      thoughts, as the glorified apostle who had finished his course and kept
+      the faith on earth. And so, whatever perfections and likeness of love we
+      may attribute to either the tried or the crowned creatures, there is the
+      difference of the stars in glory among them yet; differences of original
+      gifts, though not of occupying till their Lord come; different
+      dispensations of trial and of trust, of sorrows and support, both in their
+      own inward, variable hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of
+      peace; of the gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day,
+      or eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, or the clouds opened by
+      revelation; differences in warning, in mercies, in sickness, in signs, in
+      time of calling to account; alike only they all are by that which is not
+      of them, but the gift of God's unchangeable mercy: "I will give unto this
+      last even as unto thee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      83. The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual, no unworthy
+      one; but a longing for renovation, and for escape from a state whose every
+      phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which
+      permanence shall have become possible through perfection. Hence the great
+      call of Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed as the
+      essential expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of
+      rest; and the death bequest of Christ to men, is peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      84. He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the
+      companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent, there,
+      are the wild love, and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to
+      the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed
+      spirit, for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur
+      that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to the dust. But the
+      lessons which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as nations.
+      Again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and
+      have thought it enough to garland the tombstone when they had not crowned
+      the brow, and to pay the honour to the ashes, which they had denied to the
+      spirit. Let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult
+      and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch
+      for the few lamps, which God has toned and lighted to charm and to guide
+      them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their
+      light by their decay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      85. In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north
+      transept, there is a monument by Jacopo della Quercia to Ilaria di
+      Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more beautiful or
+      perfect than other examples of the same period; but as furnishing an
+      instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness of
+      the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life, sleep,
+      or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times. She is
+      lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet; not on the side, but
+      with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let
+      it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitation of pressure.&mdash;It
+      is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken for one. The hair is bound in
+      a flat braid over the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, the
+      tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet; there is that about them
+      which forbids breath; something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure
+      image of both. The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the
+      arms are laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall.
+      The feet are hidden by the drapery, and the form of the limbs concealed,
+      but not their tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      86. I do not know any district possessing a more pure or uninterrupted
+      fulness of mountain character, (and that of the highest order,) or which
+      appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than that which
+      borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The paths
+      which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first in steep
+      circles among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a
+      Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost
+      unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population.
+      Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark,
+      billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant
+      watches the slow colouring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb, which
+      little by little gather a feeble soil over the iron substance; then,
+      supporting the narrow slip of clinging ground with a few stones, he
+      subdues it to the spade; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is
+      seen waving upon the rocky casque. The irregular meadows run in and out
+      like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual
+      streamlets that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come
+      down for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this
+      way and that, as the wind takes them with all the grace, but with none of
+      the formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and
+      spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the
+      lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing
+      back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver
+      fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of sable stone; until
+      at last, gathered altogether again,&mdash;except perhaps some chance drops
+      caught on the apple blossom, where it has budded a little nearer the
+      cascade than it did last spring,&mdash;they find their way down to the
+      turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with quiet depth of clear
+      water furrowing among the grass-blades, and looking only like their
+      shadows but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and
+      laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day was too
+      short for them to get down the hill. Green field, and glowing rock, and
+      glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows
+      of ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade;
+      and with everlasting roar, in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder
+      down, pale from the glaciers, filling all the chasms with enchanted cold,
+      beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have
+      themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise.
+      The mountain paths stoop to those glens in forky zigzags, leading to some
+      grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the
+      ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its
+      parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up the
+      glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the openings
+      in the pines thin with excess of light; and, in its clear consuming flame
+      of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are gathered into
+      solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange faint silence of
+      possession by the sunshine, which has in it so deep a melancholy, full of
+      power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the walls of a sepulchre,
+      yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like the veil of some sea
+      spirit, that lives and dies as the foam flashes; fixed on a perpetual
+      throne, stern against all strength, lifted above all sorrows, and yet
+      effaced and melted utterly into the air by that last sunbeam that has
+      crossed to them from between the two golden clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      High above all sorrow? Yes; but not unwitnessing to it. The traveller on
+      his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf, and strikes the
+      pebbles gaily over the edge of the mountain road, sees with a glance of
+      delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that nestle along those sloping
+      orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of the pines. Here, it may well seem
+      to him, if there be sometimes hardship, there must be at least innocence
+      and peace, and fellowship of the human soul with nature. It is not so. The
+      wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all
+      that fair work of God as the men that toil among them,&mdash;perhaps more.
+      Enter the street of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with
+      that gloomy foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of
+      soul. Here, it is torpor&mdash;not absolute suffering&mdash;not starvation
+      or disease; but darkness of calm enduring: the spring, known only as the
+      time of the scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun
+      only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. They
+      do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They
+      understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality, faith&mdash;these
+      things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to bear
+      the burden up the breathless mountain flank unmurmuringly; to bid the
+      stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to see at the foot of their low
+      death-beds a pale figure upon a cross, dying, also patiently;&mdash;in
+      this they are different from the cattle and from the stones; but, in all
+      this, unrewarded, as far as concerns the present life. For them, there is
+      neither hope nor passion of spirit; for them, neither advance nor
+      exultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm
+      at sunset; and life ebbs away. No books, no thoughts, no attainments, no
+      rest,&mdash;except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the
+      church wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air; a
+      pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar-rails of the
+      dimly gilded chapel,&mdash;and so, back to the sombre home, with the cloud
+      upon them still unbroken&mdash;that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the
+      wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened even in their religion,
+      except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with
+      threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror&mdash;a smoke, as it
+      were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense; and amidst the images of
+      tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross,
+      for them, dashed more deeply than for others with gouts of blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      87. A Highland scene is beyond doubt pleasant enough in its own way; but,
+      looked close at, has its shadows.{34} Here, for instance, is the very fact
+      of one&mdash;as pretty as I can remember,&mdash;having seen many. It is a
+      little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by jutting rocks,
+      and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it to the other winds,
+      serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into quicker ripple as it
+      reaches the end of the oval field, and then, first islanding a purple and
+      white rock with an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow fall of foam
+      under a thicket of mountain ash and alder. The autumn sun, low, but clear,
+      shines on the scarlet ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which,
+      fallen here and there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in
+      the crannies of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the
+      thicket, the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare
+      to the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and
+      the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first stayed
+      it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current plunges,
+      roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on three sides by a
+      chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which the foam slips in
+      detached snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool beneath, the water
+      circles slowly like black oil; a little butterfly lies on its back, the
+      wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs feebly quivering; a fish
+      arises, and it is gone. Lower down the stream, I can see over a knoll the
+      green and damp turf roofs of four or five hovels, built at the edge of a
+      morass, which is trodden by the cattle into a black Slough of Despond at
+      their doors, and traversed by a few ill-set stepping stones, with here and
+      there a flat slab on the tops, where they have sunk out of sight;&mdash;and
+      at the turn of the brook I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog&mdash;a
+      picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there
+      all day starving. I know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are
+      nearly as bare as the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders,
+      cutting his old tartan jacket through, so sharp are they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {34} Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an
+      amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the
+      Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      88. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary
+      extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine
+      himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the living
+      world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth
+      yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its
+      substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones
+      of men. The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening
+      wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of
+      ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth
+      heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep.
+      Scattered blocks of black stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices,
+      not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple
+      poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral
+      wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire
+      on defiled altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against
+      a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds
+      stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain
+      to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the
+      darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing
+      from a nation's grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      89. I was coming down one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above
+      Montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where I could get
+      no water, and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at the turn of
+      the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen, into a hollowed pine
+      trunk, I stooped to it, and drank deeply. As I raised my head, drawing
+      breath heavily, some one behind me said, "Celui qui boira de cette eau-ci,
+      aura encore soif." I turned, not understanding for a moment what was
+      meant, and saw one of the hill peasants, probably returning to his châlet
+      from the market place at Vevay or Villeneuve. As I looked at him with an
+      uncomprehending expression, he went on with the verse: "Mais celui qui
+      boira de l'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura jamais soif."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      90. It may perhaps be permitted me{35} to mark the significance of the
+      earliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least of those in
+      which some Divine appointment or command is stated respecting them. They
+      are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from the two
+      judgments of water and fire. The Ark rests upon the mountains of Ararat;
+      and man, having passed through the great Baptism unto death, kneels upon
+      the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain
+      clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again; from the midst
+      of the first judgment by fire, the command of the Deity to His servant is,
+      "Escape to the mountain;" and the morbid fear of the hills, which fills
+      any human mind after long stay in places of luxury and sin, is strangely
+      marked in Lot's complaining reply, "I cannot escape to the mountain, lest
+      some evil take me." The third mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more
+      solemn one: "Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off." "The
+      Place," the mountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all
+      the seed of Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise
+      regarded in that vow: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from
+      whence cometh mine help." And the fourth is the delivery of the law on
+      Sinai. It seemed then to the monks that the mountains were appointed by
+      their Maker to be to man refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and
+      altars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards
+      connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the death,
+      after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed Priest; the
+      death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and lastly, with
+      the assumption of His office, by the Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and
+      Saviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {35} With reference to the choice of mountain dwellings by the greater
+      monastic orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe the connection of these three events. Although the <i>time</i> of
+      the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's displeasure, we have
+      not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that the <i>manner</i>
+      of their deaths was intended to be grievous or dishonourable to them. Far
+      from this, it cannot, I think, be doubted that in the denial of the
+      permission to enter the Promised Land, the whole punishment of their sin
+      was included; and that, as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it
+      must have been appointed for them by their Master, in all tenderness and
+      love, and with the full purpose of ennobling the close of their service
+      upon the earth. It might have seemed to <i>us</i> more honourable that
+      both should have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the
+      Tabernacle, the congregation of Israel watching by their side; and all
+      whom they loved gathered together to receive the last message from the
+      lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the
+      anointed priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to
+      realize that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He
+      who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up
+      his own spirit. He who had stood among them between the dead and the
+      living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to him,
+      that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more,
+      going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and deliver
+      himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk in thought with those two
+      brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of Israel, and
+      turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards the slopes of
+      Mount Hor; talking together for the last time, as step by step they felt
+      the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour, beneath the
+      ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they climbed, and all the
+      folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued, showed, amidst their hollows
+      in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey, now at last
+      to close. But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest as his
+      eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of
+      the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the
+      whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the
+      mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of
+      Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain
+      clouds the veil, the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him
+      still more brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?&mdash;until
+      at last, on the shadeless summit, from him on whom sin was to be laid no
+      more, from him on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press
+      their graven fire no longer, the brother and the son took breastplate and
+      ephod, and left him to his rest. There is indeed a secretness in this calm
+      faith, and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to
+      enter; but the death of Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and
+      had in it circumstances still more touching as regards the influence of
+      the external scene. For forty years Moses had not been alone. The care and
+      burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and guilt, and death,
+      had been upon him continually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if
+      he had conceived them; their tears had been his meat night and day, until
+      he had felt as if God had withdrawn His favour from him, and he had prayed
+      that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness. And now at last the
+      command came, "Get thee up into this mountain." The weary hands, that had
+      been so long stayed up against the enemies of Israel, might lean again
+      upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for the shepherd's prayer&mdash;for
+      the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his feet, though forty years
+      unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain path, as he climbed from ledge
+      to ledge of Abarim; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters of
+      the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far
+      across the silence of uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among
+      which, as now, with none beside him but God, he had led his flocks so
+      often; and which he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed
+      power to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with
+      songs of deliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life
+      that God restored to him for a day the beloved solitudes he had lost, and
+      breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world
+      in which he had laboured, and sinned, far beneath his feet in that mist of
+      dying blue;&mdash;all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten for ever.
+      The Dead Sea&mdash;a type of God's anger understood by him, of all men,
+      most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the sea his
+      depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with his Master&mdash;laid
+      waveless beneath him; and beyond it the fair hills of Judah, and the soft
+      plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening light as with the blood
+      of redemption, and fading in their distant fulness into mysteries of
+      promise and of love. There, with his unabated strength, his undimmed
+      glance, lying down upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to
+      contend for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armour. We do
+      deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came
+      down from heaven; but was his death less noble whom his Lord Himself
+      buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal
+      counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called in
+      the fulness of time, to talk with that Lord upon Hermon of the death that
+      He should accomplish at Jerusalem?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of the
+      resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in the habit
+      of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable, taking place in
+      the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the
+      best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity by brightness of heavenly
+      light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, intended to
+      strengthen the faith of His three chosen apostles. And in this, as in many
+      other events recorded by the Evangelists, we lose half the meaning, and
+      evade the practical power upon ourselves, by never accepting in its
+      fulness the idea that our Lord was "perfect man,"&mdash;"tempted in all
+      things like as we are." Our preachers are continually trying, in all
+      manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the Divinity with the
+      Manhood&mdash;an explanation which certainly involves first their being
+      able to describe the nature of Deity itself, or, in plain words, to
+      comprehend God. They never can explain, in any one particular, the union
+      of the natures; they only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers
+      as to the entireness of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the
+      contrary of this&mdash;to insist upon the <i>entireness</i> of both. We
+      never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the instinctive
+      habit of our minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning
+      and enforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to harbour in
+      our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of our
+      Lord as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will,
+      and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is: and yet one
+      half of the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of the efficiency
+      of His example, depend on His having been this to the full. Consider,
+      therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the human feelings of our
+      Lord. It was the first definite preparation for His death. He had foretold
+      it to His disciples six days before; then takes with Him the three chosen
+      ones into "an high mountain apart." From an exceeding high mountain, at
+      the first taking on Him the ministry of life, He had beheld and rejected
+      the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, He
+      takes upon Him the ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him,
+      as in Gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to be done
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tradition is that the Mount of Transfiguration was the summit of
+      Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a
+      mountain "<i>apart</i>," being in those years both, inhabited and
+      fortified. All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ had been at
+      Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention of travel southward in the six days
+      that intervened between the warning given to His disciples and the going
+      up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the southward slope of
+      that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the centre of all the
+      Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt; the
+      mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs of Jordan descended to the
+      valleys of Israel? Along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew
+      fair with the mountain lilies, His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, He
+      must have gone to pray His first recorded prayer about death; and from the
+      steep of it, before He knelt, could see to the south all the dwellings of
+      the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of
+      Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the nations,&mdash;could see, even
+      with His human sight, the gleam of that lake by Capernaum and Chorazin,
+      and many a place loved by Him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was
+      now left unto them desolate; and chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the
+      hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home; hills on which yet the
+      stones lay loose that had been taken up to cast at Him when He left them
+      for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And as He prayed, two men stood by Him." Among the many ways in which we
+      miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than our habit of
+      supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the fear of death. How
+      could He then have been tempted as we are?&mdash;since among all the
+      trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than that
+      fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity which we can never
+      comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,&mdash;as His sorrow for
+      Lazarus with the consciousness of His power to restore him; but it <i>had</i>
+      to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence of it
+      is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at His side.
+      When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels
+      of life came and ministered to Him; now in the fair world, when He is
+      girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from
+      the grave. But, from the grave, conquered. One from that tomb under
+      Abarim, which His own hand had sealed long ago; the other, from the rest
+      into which he had entered without seeing corruption. "There stood by Him
+      Moses and Elias, and spake of His decease." Then, when the prayer is
+      ended, the task accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at
+      Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is
+      borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. "Hear ye Him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavour to follow
+      in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of bygone days, closing
+      themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared,
+      the duties they owed to the active world, we may perhaps pardon them more
+      easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any influence
+      for good, nor submit to it unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men
+      whose writings we receive as inspired, together with their Lord, retired
+      whenever they had any task or trial laid upon them needing more than their
+      usual strength of spirit. Nor perhaps should we have unprofitably entered
+      into the mind of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we
+      watch the chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should
+      sometimes admit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their
+      solitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our race; and
+      indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the
+      earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of His terror on Sinai,
+      these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to
+      the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of His mercy, that
+      fell, snowlike, on the Mount of Transfiguration.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      FINIS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &amp; CO.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edinburgh &amp; London
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31045-h.htm or 31045-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/4/31045/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/31045.txt b/31045.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4ffeba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3809 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Frondes Agrestes
+       Readings in 'Modern Painters'
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: January 22, 2010 [EBook #31045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  FRONDES AGRESTES.
+
+  READINGS IN 'MODERN PAINTERS.'
+
+  CHOSEN AT HER PLEASURE,
+  BY THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND,
+  THE YOUNGER LADY OF THE THWAITE,
+  CONISTON.
+
+  'Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes.'
+
+  Thirty-Eighth Thousand.
+
+  London: George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. 1902.
+
+  Printed By Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
+  At the Ballantyne Press
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have been often asked to republish the first book of mine which the
+public noticed, and which, hitherto, remains their favourite, in a
+more easily attainable form than that of its existing editions. I am,
+however, resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts
+of it being, by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary;
+and others having been always useless, in their praise of excellence
+which the public will never give the labour necessary to discern. But,
+finding lately that one of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age,
+retains the cheerfulness and easily delighted temper of bright youth,
+had written out, for her own pleasure, a large number of passages from
+'Modern Painters,' it seemed to me certain that what such a person
+felt to be useful to herself, could not but be useful also to a class
+of readers whom I much desired to please, and who would sometimes
+enjoy, in my early writings, what I never should myself have offered
+them. I asked my friend, therefore, to add to her own already chosen
+series, any other passages she thought likely to be of permanent
+interest to general readers; and I have printed her selections in
+absolute submission to her judgment, merely arranging the pieces she
+sent me in the order which seemed most convenient for the reciprocal
+bearing of their fragmentary meanings, and adding here and there an
+explanatory note; or, it may be, a deprecatory one, in cases where my
+mind had changed. That she did me the grace to write every word with
+her own hands, adds, in my eyes, and will, I trust, in the readers'
+also, to the possible claims of the little book on their sympathy; and
+although I hope to publish some of the scientific and technical
+portions of the original volumes in my own large editions, the
+selections here made by my friend under her quiet woods at
+Coniston--the Unter-Walden of England--will, I doubt not, bring within
+better reach of many readers, for whom I am not now able myself to
+judge or choose, such service as the book was ever capable of
+rendering, in the illustration of the powers of nature, and
+intercession for her now too often despised and broken peace.
+
+Herne Hill,
+
+  5th December, 1874.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+                                                    PAGE
+  PREFACE                                              V
+
+  SECTION I.    PRINCIPLES OF ART                      1
+
+          II.   POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION       10
+
+          III.  ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY                 35
+
+          IV.       "        STREAMS AND SEA          64
+
+          V.        "        MOUNTAINS                74
+
+          VI.       "        STONES                  107
+
+          VII.      "        PLANTS AND FLOWERS      115
+
+          VIII. EDUCATION                            140
+
+          IX.   MORALITIES                           151
+
+
+
+
+FRONDES AGRESTES.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+PRINCIPLES OF ART.
+
+
+1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible
+pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral
+nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from
+some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or
+answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.
+
+
+2. The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically
+patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample
+upon it,--lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It
+is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of
+unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too,
+and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good
+heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but
+fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready
+to believe and to try all things; and yet so trustful of itself, that
+it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without
+trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and
+good, is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks
+of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its
+conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its
+delights are too penetrating,--too living,--for any whitewashed object
+or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it
+loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.
+
+
+3. It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit
+ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is
+ignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble;
+and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing
+lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron;
+astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven, than in
+teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in
+expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than
+in setting limbs.--Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement,
+every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something
+also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of
+nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us
+partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him
+in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences
+and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all
+inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire
+as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong
+torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow
+thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden
+charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to
+which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for
+us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our
+incitement, I say, not our reward,--for knowledge is its own
+reward,--herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and
+stars their times.
+
+
+4. Had it been ordained by the Almighty[1] that the highest pleasures
+of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to
+arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces,
+tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated
+lakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the
+unselfish duties and the inherent desires of every individual. But no
+such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which,
+leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse
+this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and
+thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until
+the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety,
+incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the
+labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour,--leaves it
+also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves
+susceptible of deep delight, which shall not separate us from our
+fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but
+which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always,
+harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging
+and eternal.
+
+[1] The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in
+the Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know
+all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical
+contents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which
+I doubt.
+
+
+5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power
+depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and
+becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of
+visions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting
+continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he
+has seen,--not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the
+man who has no invention is always setting things in order,[2] and
+putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming
+himself on his doings, as supreme in all ways.
+
+[2] I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a
+ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and
+orderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.
+
+
+6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,
+and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
+with quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of
+coarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
+quickly what is fine from what is common--so far acquired taste is an
+honourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in
+good taste." But,[3] so far as this higher education has a tendency to
+narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest
+of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can
+hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain,--so far as it
+fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in
+anything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in
+which it indicates some greatness of their own, (as people build
+marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they
+like the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as
+because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human
+eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads
+people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value
+of substance and heart, liking a well-_said_ thing better than a true
+thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a
+delicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,--and in all
+other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting
+truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction
+between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less
+despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure,
+and grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with
+the affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these
+several ways, the feeling induced by what is called "a liberal
+education" is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.
+
+[3] Nobody need begin this second volume sentence unless they are
+breathed like the Graeme:--
+
+"Right up Ben Ledi could he press, And not a sob his toil confess."
+
+
+7. He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern
+facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again
+brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their
+noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies,
+will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his
+dreams.[4]
+
+[4] Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the
+government of the mind is, than the force of its exertion. Nearly all
+the world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.
+
+
+8. All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted. Moses
+has never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere
+ruddy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never.[5] What
+single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so
+much as the faintest shadow of their deeds? Strong men in armour, or
+aged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked
+at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, he found were intended to stand for
+David, or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had
+suggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he
+would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,
+representing, doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or
+a gambling quarrel in a pothouse--with no sense of pain or surprise?
+Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that
+what I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and
+sincere never yet has existed.
+
+[5] I knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi,
+or Sandro Botticelli; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper
+feelings, even of the men whom I was chiefly studying,--Tintoret and Fra
+Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with
+the greater Florentines as I was then, and the passage, for _them_,
+remains true.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.
+
+
+9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,--that is to say,
+of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which
+cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,[6] to
+enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded
+as belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this.
+It is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven,
+and earth, and sea, as if they were now present,--the souls of the
+righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the
+inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most
+desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the
+ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the
+mountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes
+and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if
+in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer.
+Its second and ordinary use is, to empower us to traverse the scenes
+of all other history, and to force the facts to become again visible,
+so as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made
+if we had witnessed them; and, in the minor necessities of life, to
+enable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of
+enjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and, in any
+present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
+hours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in
+allegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce
+them; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
+with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
+suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
+companionship, instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies
+in the grass, and naiads in the wave.
+
+[6] I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question
+here raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement,
+the account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture
+on Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make
+it generally accessible.
+
+
+10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination,
+let none of us despise the power and art of memory.
+
+Let the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to
+have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
+rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the
+leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the
+fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting
+upon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble
+sun-stain, (though even that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which
+should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed.
+Or rather, (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus
+sufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it would be in effect
+nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment
+into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied
+spirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the
+present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very
+bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them
+in act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was
+granted to the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them
+fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and
+stayed on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning
+purpose.--Conceive, so far as is possible, such power as this, and
+then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly
+of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half-divine, a gift
+which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with
+the felicities, of angels.[7]
+
+[7] Passage written in opposition to the vulgar notion that the 'mere
+imitation' of Nature is easy, and useless.
+
+
+11. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I
+do not mean by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation of
+speaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
+between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings
+and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually
+know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions,
+but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not
+think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a
+good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has found
+fault with his work,--"It cannot be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton
+knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled
+anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to
+fall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of
+powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but
+_through_ them--that they could not do or be anything else than God
+made them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other
+man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
+
+
+12. As far as I can observe, it is a constant law, that the greatest
+men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and
+the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age.
+Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the
+fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in
+the sixteenth; all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor
+error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital
+present. If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays
+on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they
+_are_ perfect plays, just because there is no care about centuries in
+them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
+time--and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give universal
+truth, but because painting, honestly and completely, from the men
+about him, he painted that human nature which is indeed constant
+enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being _at heart_ what a
+rogue is in the nineteenth, and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
+knightly man being in like manner very similar to other such at any
+other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
+always universal; not because it is not _portrait_, but because it is
+_complete_ portrait, down to the heart, which is the same in all ages;
+and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it
+is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, the
+manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakespeare
+paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature, as they saw
+it in their time, down to the root; and it does for _all_ time; but as
+for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of
+thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will
+find it in neither of them,[8] nor in any other perfectly great man
+that I know of.
+
+[8] What vestige of Egyptian character is there, for instance, in
+Cleopatra?--of Athenian in Theseus or Timon?--of old English in Imogen
+or Cordelia?--of old Scottish in Macbeth?--or even of mediaeval Italian
+in Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, or Desdemona? And the Roman plays
+appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the
+eternal strength of the world,--pure family life, sustained by
+agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood.
+
+
+13. I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my
+calling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of
+literature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of
+Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson,
+may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless
+glance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of his
+youth; and those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the
+French novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the
+influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my
+ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in
+an age which has produced De Balzac, and Goethe.[9]
+
+[9] I knew nothing of Goethe when I put him with Balzac; but the
+intolerable dulness which encumbers the depth of Wilhelm Meister, and
+the cruel reserve which conceals from all but the intensest readers the
+meaning of Faust, have made him, in a great degree, an evil influence in
+European literature; and Evil is always second-rate.
+
+But the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and
+description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether
+of lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw.
+The true seer feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much
+describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;
+leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels,
+but goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing
+and careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this
+plain recording of what people said, and did; or with the right
+invention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that
+to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a
+story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage
+concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what
+happens; which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
+separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it
+oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that
+noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of
+somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even, therefore,
+where this sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of
+Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the
+creative; and though perfection even in narrow fields is perhaps as
+rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another "In
+Memoriam" as another "Guy Mannering," I unhesitatingly receive as a
+greater manifestation of power, the right invention of a few sentences
+spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the
+most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.
+
+
+14. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy;
+but Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven.
+Shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from
+breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon
+her the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the
+keeping of the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.[10]
+
+[10] I leave this passage, as my friend has chosen it; but it is
+unintelligible without the contexts, which show how all the emotions
+described in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on
+trust in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.
+
+
+15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great
+man will "bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him,
+and answer some end for which no other word would have done equally
+well. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to
+apply the word 'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There
+is a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
+agreeableness, but it seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it
+complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
+seems increased; and when farther he is at one and the same moment to
+be called a 'whelp' and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common
+idealist might well be brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do
+it:--
+
+                    "Awake his warlike spirit,
+  And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
+  Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
+  Making defeat on the full power of France,
+  While his most mighty father on a hill
+  Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
+  Forage in blood of French nobility."
+
+
+16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree
+of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses
+us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty.
+That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and
+glittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing
+that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may
+be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space
+of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand
+bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but
+because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work,
+and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet
+high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly
+impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and
+knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
+that we are not conscious of them.
+
+
+17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the
+sight of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion
+hanging, like dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and
+imperfect knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its size, coupled
+with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and
+foundations; then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of
+its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon
+its side;--then, and in very sadness, a sense of strange companionship
+with past generations, in seeing what they saw. They did not see the
+clouds that are floating over your head, nor the cottage wall on the
+other side of the field, nor the road by which you are travelling. But
+they saw _that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to
+them as to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease
+to look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
+with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
+gifts and glories of the Alp;--the fancying forth of all the fountains
+that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of
+its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs,
+and all the chalets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads
+couched upon its pastures; while, together with the thoughts of these,
+rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and
+happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the
+everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. These images, and
+far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at
+the sight of the Alps. You may not trace them in your heart, for there
+is a great deal more in your heart, both of evil and good, than you
+can ever trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that.
+Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain
+than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the
+kind of images which cause you to do so; and observe, these are
+nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the thing.
+We call the power 'Imagination,' because it imagines or conceives; but
+it is only noble imagination, if it imagines or conceives the _truth_.
+And according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility
+to the pathetic or impressive character of the things known, will be
+the degree of this imaginative delight.
+
+
+18. So natural is it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather
+than in present possession, and so subtle is the charm which the
+imagination casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often
+a more touching power in the scenes which contain far-away promises of
+something greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the
+treasures and powers of nature in an unconquerable and excellent
+glory, leaving nothing more to be by fancy pictured or pursued. I do
+not know that there is a district in the world more calculated to
+illustrate this power of the expectant imagination than that which
+surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it
+towards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably elevated, but
+presenting no object of striking interest to the passing traveller; so
+that as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the
+Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other
+sensation than that of weariness, all the more painful because
+accompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the
+splendour of the Bernese Oberland. The traveller--foot-sore, feverish,
+and satiated with glacier and precipice,--lies back in the corner of
+the diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is winding
+and hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and
+tame. Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of
+staying in it a few days, until his mind has recovered its tone, and
+take one or two long walks through its fields, and he will have other
+thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating district of grey
+sandstone, never attaining any considerable height, but having enough
+of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of
+bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to
+render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges.
+Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some
+five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the
+gentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; and then,
+suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath,
+the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff
+that form its banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them,
+at its turns, into perilous over-hanging; and, on the other shore, at
+the same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the
+water, half overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness,
+inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers
+along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for existence
+beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and murmurs
+in an outer solitude. It is passing through a thickly peopled country;
+but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away
+torrent among the high hills has its companions; the goats browse
+beside it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with
+his staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his
+mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions; it flows on in an
+infinite seclusion, not secret, nor threatening, but a quietness of
+sweet daylight and open air--a broad space of tender and deep
+desolateness, drooped into repose out of the midst of human labour and
+life; the waves plashing lowly, with none to hear them; and the wild
+birds building in the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the
+soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading, with no hand to
+gather them;--and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to
+the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the
+brows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few
+steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and
+wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the
+ravine,--and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness;
+the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its
+pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden,
+and goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, hard,
+park-like roads rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or
+disappearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the wild
+raspberry and rose, or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half
+glade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns
+trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house,
+surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries,
+and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening
+to look upon in their delicate homeliness--delicate, yet in some sort,
+rude; not like our English homes--trim, laborious, formal,
+irreproachable in comfort--but with a peculiar carelessness and
+largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed
+loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in
+all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and
+fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to
+the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing
+wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from
+desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,--a generous land, bright
+with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful
+fulness, kind and wild. Nor this without some sterner element mingled
+in the heart of it. For, along all its ridges stand the dark masses of
+innumerable pines,[11] taking no part in its gladness; asserting
+themselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished
+even in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the
+night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy
+bendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest,
+and tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against
+the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet
+they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there
+chiefly to show how bright everything else is round them; and all the
+clouds look of pure silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter
+and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points
+of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing green where
+they run up between the purple trunks; and the sweet field footpaths
+skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up
+and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and
+then hopelessly among the violets and ground-ivy and brown sheddings
+of the fibrous leaves, and at last plunging into some open aisle,
+where the light through the distant stems shows that there is a chance
+of coming out again on the other side; and coming out indeed in a
+little while from the scented darkness into the dazzling air and
+marvellous landscape, which stretches still farther and farther in new
+wilfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of
+the Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern
+clouds.
+
+[11] Almost the only pleasure I have, myself, in rereading my old books,
+is my sense of having at least done justice to the pine. Compare the
+passage in this book, No. 47.
+
+
+19.[12] Although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however
+apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure; though the
+whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most
+travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire,
+Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts
+aside, there is not an English county which I should not find
+entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,--yet all
+my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills,
+colouring with their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb.
+The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either
+by what real mountain character it has in itself, (for in extent and
+succession of promontory, the flanks of the French valleys have quite
+the sublimity of true mountain distances,) or by its broken ground and
+rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above against
+the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave
+of the Seine, but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the
+sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope of the
+Alps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads to the southwest,
+the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be
+no hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot deceive myself
+into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be
+the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the
+landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness
+and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor
+Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual
+summer--or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to
+Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for
+one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.
+
+[12] This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the
+general statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own
+idiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it
+was, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome
+reedy fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.
+
+
+20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always
+in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the
+foot of the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble
+unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet
+without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom,
+eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea
+grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not
+falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
+fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of
+what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having
+no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for
+pity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly
+garrulous of better days; but, useful still, going through its own
+daily work,--as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing
+his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth,
+in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering
+human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer
+still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far
+across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of
+surfy sand and hillocked shore,--the lighthouse for life, and the
+belfry for labour, and this--for patience and praise.
+
+I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come
+about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the
+epitome of all that makes the continent of Europe interesting, as
+opposed to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that
+agedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new
+into harmony. We in England have our new streets, our new inn, our
+green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it--a mere
+_specimen_ of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet, to be
+shown; and which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf
+at once, under cover;--but, on the Continent, the links are unbroken
+between the past and present; and, in such use as they can serve for,
+the grey-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in
+unbroken line, the generations of spared buildings are seen
+succeeding, each in its place. And thus, in its largeness, in its
+permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of
+all pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais
+tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking
+because usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of
+feelings the exact reverse of these.[13]
+
+[13] My friend won't write out the reverse! Our book is to be all jelly,
+and no powder, it seems. Well, I'm very thankful she likes the
+jelly,--at any rate, it makes me sure that _it_ is well made.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: THE SKY.
+
+
+21. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the
+sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature has done more for the
+sake of pleasing man--more for the sole and evident purpose of talking
+to him, and teaching him--than in any other of her works; and it is
+just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of
+her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than
+the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their
+organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as
+we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great,
+ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything
+well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps
+a film of morning and evening mist for dew;--and instead of this,
+there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when Nature is not
+producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory,
+and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the
+most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain[14] it is all done for
+us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever
+placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has
+this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be
+seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live
+always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he
+ceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is for all:
+bright as it is, it is not
+
+    "too bright nor good
+  For human nature's daily food;"
+
+it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and
+exalting of the heart,--for soothing it, and purifying it from its
+dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes
+awful--never the same for two moments together; almost human in its
+passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its
+infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its
+ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is
+essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject
+of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look
+upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon
+all which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are
+to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew
+which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of
+meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be
+worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in
+our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a
+last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has
+been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been
+warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms
+and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded
+the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
+out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and
+mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead
+clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew
+them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as
+unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it
+is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not
+in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not
+in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the
+highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the
+earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are
+but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be
+addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued
+passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the
+perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it
+is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet
+vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are
+to be found always, yet each found but once;--it is through these that
+the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty
+given.
+
+[14] At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At
+five-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other
+creatures in the universe to be pleased, or,--it may be,--displeased, by
+the weather.
+
+
+22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not
+knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most
+dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the
+rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt
+imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into
+apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all
+these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour,
+and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the
+barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of
+cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe
+or sheaf of lighted rain.
+
+
+23. Aqueous vapour or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes
+visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you
+not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can
+see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being
+thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light.
+Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a
+palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a
+real obstacle to the vision--you cannot see things clearly through it.
+In the same way, wherever vapour is illuminated by transverse rays,
+there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the
+purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the
+degree of illumination. But where vapour is in shade, it has very
+little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and greyer
+than it otherwise would be, but not, itself, unless very dense,
+distinguishable or felt as mist.
+
+
+24. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are?
+
+[15]That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level
+and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an
+inundation--why is _it_ so heavy, and why does it lie so low, being
+yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of
+morning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those
+colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and
+strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery
+flanks,--why are _they_ so light, their bases high over our heads,
+high over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not as the sun
+_rises_, but as he _descends_, and leave the stars of twilight clear;
+while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth, like a shroud? Or
+that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay,
+which does _not_ steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round
+them, and yet,--and yet,--slowly; now falling in a fair waved line
+like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an
+instant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with
+that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and weaves itself among
+their branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the
+moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some strong
+enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within
+those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's
+bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hills--that white
+arch which never forms but over the supreme crest,--how is it stayed
+there, repelled apparently from the snow,--nowhere touching it, the
+clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving
+it--poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? Or those war clouds
+that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire,--how is
+their barbed strength bridled? What bits are those they are champing
+with their vapourous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued
+leviathans of the Sea of Heaven,--out of their nostrils goeth smoke,
+and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him
+that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the
+habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the
+measures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from
+morning until evening--what rebuke is this which has awed them into
+peace;--what hand has reined them back by the way in which they came?
+
+[15] This is a fifth volume bit, and worth more attention.
+
+I know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these
+are easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the
+mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all.
+"Knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be
+one of pride? The wondrous works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge?
+Is _our_ knowledge ever to be so?...
+
+For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I
+think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see
+less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him
+with hard questions; to which perhaps, if we look close at the
+heavenly scroll, we may find also a syllable or two of answer,
+illuminated here and there.[16]
+
+[16] Compare, in 'Sartor Resartus,' the boy's watching from the garden
+wall.
+
+And though the climates of the south and east may be _comparatively_
+clear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air.
+Intense clearness, whether, in the north, after or before rain, or in
+some moments of twilight in the south, is always, as far as I am
+acquainted with natural phenomena, a _notable_ thing. Mist of some
+sort, or mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general
+facts; the distance may vary in different climates at which the
+effects of mist begin, but they are always present; and therefore, in
+all probability, it is meant that we should enjoy them.... We surely
+need not wonder that mist and all its phenomena have been made
+delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend
+on our being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those
+matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
+intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we
+shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and
+power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and
+live in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and closing there;
+rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of
+stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in
+the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where
+the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness
+wearied. And I believe that the resentment of this interference of the
+mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken
+for virtues. To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed
+unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge
+must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed,)
+wherever _pride_ has any share in the work, even knowledge and light
+may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man
+perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and
+if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery
+as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in
+humbleness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure; and I think
+that every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in
+knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more
+which it cannot know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over
+this, for we may always know more, if we choose, by working on; but
+the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing that the
+journey is endless, the treasure inexhaustible,--watching the cloud
+still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure
+that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the mysteries
+of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness
+being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I
+know there are an evil mystery, and a deathful dimness,--the mystery
+of the great Babylon--the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do
+not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which
+the "angels desire to look into," or with the dimness which, even
+before the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the
+eternal volume.
+
+
+25. On some isolated mountain at day-break,[17] when the night mists
+first rise from off the plain, watch their white and lakelike fields,
+as they float in level bays, and winding gulfs, about the islanded
+summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder
+and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch
+when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam
+of their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under
+their depths the glittering city and green pastures lie like Atlantis,
+between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
+every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the
+wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests
+and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the
+plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists
+rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the
+winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the
+morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
+leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of
+material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear
+again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible
+dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in
+the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a
+little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into
+white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy
+and motionless, only piled, with every instant, higher and higher into
+the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the
+pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of
+narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the sky, inch by inch,
+with their grey network, and take the light off the landscape with an
+eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of
+the leaves, together;--and then you will see horizontal bars of black
+shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you
+know not how, among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them
+form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant
+ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice, as a hawk
+pauses over his prey;--and then you will hear the sudden rush of the
+awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapour swept
+away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain, let
+down to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black bending
+fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its
+surface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall
+see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their
+broad sides smoking and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like
+rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now gathered again,--while the
+smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball
+beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing
+wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no
+more, dyeing all the air about it with blood;--and then you shall hear
+the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see
+a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter,
+brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted
+up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after
+star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an
+army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light
+upon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company,
+troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole
+heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And
+then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and
+the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a
+wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch
+the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains,
+like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of
+solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
+morning--their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
+the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
+altar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
+flushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer
+light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
+every wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
+canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault
+beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels;
+and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
+bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
+who has best delivered this His message unto men!
+
+[17] I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection
+of the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand
+for a day and night in observation; to suffer the effects of a severe
+thunder-storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such
+a storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much
+doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.
+
+
+26.[18] The account given of the stages of creation in the first
+chapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the
+simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the second
+day. I suppose that this statement is passed over by careless readers
+without any endeavour to understand it, and contemplated by simple and
+faithful readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be
+understood. But there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter,
+and it seems to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And
+the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being the
+first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only one in
+which the word "Heaven," all-important as that word is to our
+understanding of the most precious promises of Scripture, receives a
+definite explanation. Let us therefore see whether, by a little
+careful comparison of the verse with other passages in which the word
+occurs, we may not be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of
+this portion of the chapter as of the rest. In the first place the
+English word, "Firmament," itself is obscure and useless; because we
+never employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys no other
+distinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity with
+it we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point
+nor value than if it were written, "God said, Let there be a something
+in the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven." But
+the marginal reading, "Expansion," has definite value; and the
+statement that "God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of
+the waters, and God called the expansion, Heaven," has an
+apprehensible meaning. Accepting this expression as the one intended,
+we have next to ask what expansion there is, between two waters,
+describable by the term "heaven." Milton adopts the term "expanse,"
+but he understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds
+the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water beyond
+the air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division
+of waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. Now with respect to
+this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is intended for
+the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and
+that therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the
+likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows
+little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere
+surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the
+sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of
+the bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being
+able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, "expansion in
+the midst of the waters;" and if, having once seized this idea, he
+proceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if
+he had ever noticed _anything_ of the nature of clouds, that the level
+line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide
+"waters from waters"--that is to say, divide water in its collective
+and tangible state, from water in its aerial state; or the waters
+which _fall_, and _flow_, from those which _rise_, and _float_. Next,
+if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word
+_heaven_, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's
+dwelling-place, we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of
+cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud on Sinai; appearing in a cloud on
+the mercy-seat; filling the Temple of Solomon with the cloud when its
+dedication is accepted; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel;
+ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount
+Olivet; and in like manner returning to judgment: "Behold He cometh
+with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." "Then shall they see the
+Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great
+glory." While, further, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as
+interchangeable words in those psalms which most distinctly set forth
+the power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made
+darkness pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of
+the skies." And again, "Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy
+faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And again, "His excellency is
+over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds." And again, "The
+clouds poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy
+thunder was in the heaven." Again, "Clouds and darkness are round
+about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His
+throne; the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the people see
+His glory." In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable if they
+possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely
+for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the
+apprehension of their life and power. The expression, "He bowed the
+heavens," for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a
+magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful
+manifestation of God's power to the writer of the psalm in which the
+words occur. But the expression either has _plain_ meaning, or it has
+_no_ meaning. Understand by the term "heavens" the compass of infinite
+space around the earth, and the expression "bowed the heavens,"
+however sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space cannot be
+bent or bowed. But understand by the "heavens" the veil of clouds
+above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor
+obscure; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not
+as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He
+is still doing before our own eyes, day by day. By accepting the words
+in their simple sense, we are thus led to apprehend the immediate
+presence of the Deity, and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near
+us whenever the storm-cloud stoops upon its course; while by our vague
+and inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His
+presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know:
+and gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who "maketh
+the clouds His chariot," we define and explain ourselves into dim and
+distant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places,
+and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature.
+All errors of this kind--and in the present day we are in constant and
+grievous danger of falling into them--arise from the originally
+mistaken idea that man can, "by searching, find out God--find out the
+Almighty to perfection"--that is to say, by help of courses of
+reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the
+Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of
+comparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the
+beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to
+His creatures should be a _simple_ way, which _all_ those creatures
+may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity
+or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should
+be possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be
+rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their
+having a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the
+Deity has stooped from His throne, and has, not only in the person of
+the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human _flesh_, but, in the
+person of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our human _thoughts_,
+and permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply
+and clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with
+and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our
+rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and
+glorified by our labour; and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and
+active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This
+conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one
+which can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which _for us_
+can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to
+accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of
+stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we
+hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge
+higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,--God
+takes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and
+inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our
+ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we
+are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no
+God."
+
+[18] This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and
+best, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify
+it, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received
+as it explains them, or neglected altogether.
+
+I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own
+creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and
+imagination it would be received by a simple-minded man; and finding
+that "the heavens and the earth" are spoken of always as having
+something like equal relation to each other, ("Thus the heavens and
+the earth were finished, and all the host of them,") I reject at once
+all idea of the term "heavens" being intended to signify the infinity
+of space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite
+heavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the
+sun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation to them, no
+relation of equality or comparison could be inferred. But I suppose
+the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal
+companionship with our globe; I understand the "rolling of these
+heavens together as a scroll," to be an equal and relative destruction
+with the melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the
+making of the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned,
+most magnificent ordinance of the clouds;--the ordinance that, as the
+great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a
+plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the
+face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper
+and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their
+nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their
+own bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or
+rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices, from
+pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided
+through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleasure like
+the armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the
+heights of the hills; no longer hurried downwards for ever, moving but
+to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but
+covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing
+the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture of diverse colours,
+of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries
+flame.
+
+This I believe is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me
+that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means
+us to acknowledge His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and
+blessing us: "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the
+presence of God." "He doth set His bow in the clouds," and thus
+renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promises of
+everlasting love. "In them hath He set a _tabernacle_ for the sun;"
+whose burning ball, which, without the firmament, would be seen but as
+an intolerable and scorching circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by
+that firmament surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by
+mediatorial ministries: by the firmament of clouds the temple is
+built, for his presence to fill with light at noon; by the firmament
+of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening, round the sanctuary of
+his rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is
+divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that
+fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which
+the mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring.
+And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the
+shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of
+His own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the
+Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot
+behold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men,
+those heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: "Swear not, neither by
+heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His
+footstool!" And all those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and
+grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about
+the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and
+glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our
+hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple
+words, "Our Father, which art in heaven."
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: STREAMS AND SEA.
+
+
+27. Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature,
+and without assistance and combination, water is the most wonderful.
+If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty
+which we have seen in clouds,--then, as the instrument by which the
+earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags
+chiselled into grace;--then, as in the form of snow, it robes the
+mountains it has made with that transcendent light which we could not
+have conceived if we had not seen;--then, as it exists in the foam of
+the torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which
+rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging
+shore, in the broad lake and glancing river;--finally, in that which
+is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable
+power the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea;--what
+shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and
+beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling?
+It is like trying to paint a soul!
+
+
+28. The great angel of the sea--rain; the angel, observe,--the
+messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the
+diffused, perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and
+returning of the intermittent cloud. All turns upon that
+intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock; cave fern of tangled glen;
+wayside well--perennial, patient, silent, clear, stealing through its
+square font of rough-hewn stone; ever thus deep, no more;--which the
+winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of
+stain as of decline;--where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the
+insect darts undefiling: cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted
+even in flood scarcely over its stepping stones,--but through all
+sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water
+among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the
+strong river gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted
+and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie
+ghastly and bare; but here in the moss lands, the soft wings of the
+sea angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter
+on the hills; strange laughings and glitterings of silver streamlets,
+born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel,
+answering to them as they wave.
+
+
+29. Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the
+north side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of
+water first bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the
+arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome
+of crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen
+except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star;
+and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves,[19] at
+the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that
+foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and
+how, ever and anon startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray
+leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and
+driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how through the
+curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the
+water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through
+white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous
+stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the
+choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the
+thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild
+water,--their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of
+loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again
+upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away,--the dew gushing from
+their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and
+sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding
+the lichens, which chase and chequer them with purple and silver.
+
+[19] Well noticed. The drawing of the fall of Schaffhausen, which I made
+at the time of writing this study, was one of the very few, either by
+other draughtsmen or myself, which I have seen Turner pause at with
+serious attention.
+
+
+30. Close beside the path by which travellers ascend the Montanvert
+from the valley of Chamouni, on the right hand, where it first begins
+to rise among the pines, there descends a small stream from the foot
+of the granite peak known to the guides as the Aiguille Charmoz. It is
+concealed from the traveller by a thicket of alder, and its murmur is
+hardly heard, for it is one of the weakest streams of the valley. But
+it is a constant stream, fed by a permanent, though small, glacier;
+and continuing to flow even to the close of summer, when more copious
+torrents, depending only on the melting of the lower snows, have left
+their beds,--"stony channels in the sun." The long drought which took
+place in the autumn of 1854, sealing every source of waters except
+these perpetual ones, left the torrent of which I am speaking, and
+such others, in a state peculiarly favourable to observance of their
+_least_ action on the mountains from which they descend. They were
+entirely limited to their own ice fountains, and the quantity of
+powdered rock which they brought down was, of course, at its minimum,
+being nearly unmingled with any earth derived from the dissolution of
+softer soil, or vegetable mould, by rains. At three in the afternoon,
+on a warm day in September, when the torrent had reached its average
+maximum strength for the day, I filled an ordinary Bordeaux wine flask
+with the water where it was least turbid. From this quart of water I
+obtained twenty-four grains of sand and sediment more or less fine. I
+cannot estimate the quantity of water in the stream; but the runlet of
+it at which I filled the flask was giving about two hundred bottles a
+minute, or rather more, carrying down, therefore, about three quarters
+of a pound of powdered granite every minute. This would be forty-five
+pounds an hour; but allowing for the inferior power of the stream in
+the cooler periods of the day, and taking into consideration, on the
+other side, its increased power in rain, we may, I think, estimate its
+average hour's work at twenty-eight or thirty pounds, or a
+hundredweight every four hours. By this insignificant runlet,
+therefore, rather more than two tons of the substance of the Mont
+Blanc are displaced and carried down a certain distance every week;
+and as it is only for three or four months that the flow of the stream
+is checked by frost, we may certainly allow eighty tons for the mass
+which it annually moves. It is not worth while to enter into any
+calculation of the relation borne by this runlet to the great torrents
+which descend from the chain of Mont Blanc into the valley of
+Chamouni.[20] I but take this quantity, eighty tons, as the result of
+the labour of a scarcely noticeable runlet at the side of one of them,
+utterly irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of
+mountain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the
+flank of a soft rock looking like a trench for a railroad), and we
+shall then begin to apprehend something of the operation of the great
+laws of change which are the conditions of all material existence,
+however apparently enduring. The hills, which, as compared with living
+beings, seem "everlasting," are in truth as perishing as they; its
+veins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart, as the crimson
+pulse does ours; the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its
+appointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a human old age;
+and it is but the lapse of the longer years of decay which, in the
+sight of its Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from the moth
+and the worm.
+
+[20] I have slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient
+of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the
+ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of the larger streams.
+
+
+31. Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of
+a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days
+and nights; and to those who have not, I believe it must be
+unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the
+complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water,
+from its prolonged agitation, is beaten, not into mere creamy foam,
+but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths
+from wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon
+like a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
+dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,
+which make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are
+a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in
+their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the
+water is under a great cataract,--and their masses, being thus half
+water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise,
+and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like
+actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its
+moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
+described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
+finely divided water, but with boiling mist: imagine also the low
+rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
+seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to
+wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch
+of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
+precipices and peaks furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all
+this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
+distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
+nor any landmark, or natural evidence of position is left; that the
+heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no
+farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract.[21]
+
+[21] The whole of this was written merely to show the meaning of
+Turner's picture of the steamer in distress, throwing up signals. It is
+a good study of wild weather; but, separate from its aim, utterly feeble
+in comparison to the few words by which any of the great poets will
+describe sea, when they have got to do it. I am rather proud of the
+short sentence in the 'Harbours of England,' describing a great breaker
+against rock:--"One moment, a flint cave,--the next, a marble
+pillar,--the next, a fading cloud." But there is nothing in
+sea-description, detailed, like Dickens' storm at the death of Ham, in
+'David Copperfield.'
+
+
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: MOUNTAINS.
+
+
+32. The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are
+followed immediately by those notable ones,--"And God said, Let the
+waters which are under the heavens be gathered together into one
+place, and let the dry land appear." We do not, perhaps, often enough
+consider the deep signification of this sentence. We are too apt to
+receive it as the description of an event vaster only in its extent,
+not in its nature, than the compelling of the Red Sea to draw back
+that Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling
+the waves of the greater ocean together on an heap, and setting bars
+and doors to them eternally. But there is a far deeper meaning than
+this in the solemn words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of
+the Psalm, "His hands prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the
+earth had been _void_; for, it had been _without_ _form_. The command
+that the waters should be gathered, was the command that the earth
+should be _sculptured_. The sea was not driven to its place in
+suddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to its place in perfect
+and patient obedience. The dry land appeared, not in level sands
+forsaken by the surges, which those surges might again claim for their
+own; but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for
+ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the
+clouds of heaven.
+
+What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of Genesis, is
+not at present of any importance for us to consider. By what furnaces
+of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it
+was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of sea-waves it was
+engraven and finished into its perfect form, we may, perhaps,
+hereafter endeavour to conjecture; but here, as in few words the work
+is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be
+comprehended by us; and, as we read the mighty sentence, "Let the dry
+land appear," we should try to follow the finger of God as it engraved
+upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its
+everlasting form, as gulf by gulf the channels of the deep were
+ploughed; and cape by cape the lines were traced with Divine
+foreknowledge of the shores that were to limit the nations; and chain
+by chain the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their
+foundations fastened for ever; and the compass was set upon the face
+of the depth, and the fields and the highest part of the dust of the
+world were made; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow
+on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary.
+
+It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is not
+possible, to conjecture the manner or the time in which this work was
+done; but it is deeply necessary for all men to consider the
+magnificence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wisdom
+and love which are manifested in the ordinances of the hills. For
+observe, in order to bring the world into the form which it now bears,
+it was not mere _sculpture_ that was needed; the mountains could not
+stand for a day unless they were formed of materials altogether
+different from those which constitute the lower hills, and the
+surfaces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be prepared for
+every mountain chain, yet not so hard but that it might be capable of
+crumbling down into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest, and the
+Alpine flower; not so hard but that in the midst of the utmost majesty
+of its enthroned strength there should be seen on it the seal of
+death, and the writing of the same sentence that had gone forth
+against the human frame, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
+return." And with this perishable substance the most majestic forms
+were to be framed that were consistent with the safety of man; and the
+peak was to be lifted and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as
+was possible, in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks
+upon the slopes, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. And
+observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in doing this. It
+was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such eminences should be
+created, in order to fit the earth in any wise for human habitation;
+for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing
+of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most
+part plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the
+purifying of the winds, are the least of the services appointed to the
+hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's
+working--to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of
+astonishment,--are their higher missions. They are as a great and
+noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and
+covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is
+impossible to examine, in their connected system, the features of even
+the most ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has
+been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest
+compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the heart of man:
+"as far as _possible_,"--that is, as far as is consistent with the
+fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death
+must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them,
+and the briar and thorn spring up upon them; but they so smite as to
+bring their rocks into the fairest forms, and so spring as to make the
+very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland
+and Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beautiful, and
+always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange how many deep
+sources of delight are gathered into the compass of their glens and
+vales; and how, down to the most secret cluster of their far-away
+flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the whole
+heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding
+forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so
+passionate, that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at
+last, neglects of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among the
+true mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose of appeal at
+once to all the faculties of the human spirit becomes still more
+manifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the
+richness of the valleys at their feet; the grey downs of southern
+England and treeless coteaux of central France, and grey swells of
+Scottish moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves,
+are at least destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields
+of the lowlands. But the great mountains _lift_ the lowlands on _their
+sides_. Let the reader imagine first the appearance of the most varied
+plain of some richly cultivated country; let him imagine it dark with
+graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the space
+of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents
+of scenery and life; leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows,
+strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet
+footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy
+flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle; and when he has wearied
+himself with endless imagining, and left no space without some
+loveliness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its
+infinite treasures of natural beauty, and happy human life, gathered
+up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the other, like a
+woven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop
+from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts
+along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves
+aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his
+horse plunges, and all its villages nestling themselves into the new
+windings of its glens, and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of
+greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and
+sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying
+quietly, half on the grass, half in the air,--and he will have as yet,
+in all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great
+Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery, becomes lovelier
+in this change; the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the
+level line of plain, assume strange curves of strength and grace as
+they bend themselves against the mountain side; they breathe more
+freely and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher,
+looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother
+tree; the flowers which on the arable plain fall before the plough,
+now find out for themselves unapproachable places where year by year
+they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams
+which in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now
+move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring
+health and life wherever the glance of their waves can reach....
+
+It may not, therefore, be altogether profitless or unnecessary to
+review briefly the nature of the three great offices which mountain
+ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the health and
+increase the happiness of mankind. Their first use is, of course, to
+give motion to water. Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep
+streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the
+massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in
+Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the
+ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt,
+some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary
+before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage;
+and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of
+our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of
+which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water is a
+perpetual sign--that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the earth
+shall find no resting-place; shall find, on the contrary, fixed
+channels traced for them from the ravines of the central crests down
+which they roar, in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath
+the banks of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly
+among the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared
+for them by which, at some appointed rate of journey, they must
+evermore descend, sometimes slow, and sometimes swift, but never
+pausing; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over marked
+for them at each successive sunrise, the place which has known them
+knowing them no more, and the gateways of guarding mountains opened
+for them in cleft and chasm, none letting them in their pilgrimage;
+and, from afar off, the great heart of the sea calling them to itself!
+"Deep calleth unto deep." I know not which of the two is the more
+wonderful,--that calm, gradated, invisible slope of the champaign
+land, which gives motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it
+through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of the land
+immediately around them, would yet, unless so supernaturally divided,
+have fatally intercepted the flow of the waters from far-off
+countries. When did the great spirit of the river first knock at these
+adamantine gates? When did the porter open to it, and cast his keys
+away for ever, lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied--no one
+should be satisfied--with that vague answer, The river cut its way.
+Not so. The river _found_ its way. [22]I do not see that rivers in
+their own strength can do much in cutting their way; they are nearly
+as apt to choke their channels up as to carve them out. Only give a
+river some little sudden power in a valley, and see how it will use
+it. Cut itself a bed? Not so, by any means, but fill up its bed; and
+look for another in a wild, dissatisfied, inconsistent manner,--any
+way rather than the old one will better please it; and even if it is
+banked up and forced to keep to the old one, it will not deepen, but
+do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And although wherever
+water has a steep fall it will swiftly cut itself a bed deep into the
+rock or ground, it will not, when the rock is hard, cut a wider
+channel than it actually needs; so that if the existing river beds,
+through ranges of mountains, had in reality been cut by the streams,
+they would be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in the form of
+narrow and profound ravines, like the well-known channel of the
+Niagara, below the fall; not in that of extended valleys. And the
+actual work of true mountain rivers, though often much greater in
+proportion to their body of water than that of the Niagara, is quite
+insignificant when compared with the area and depth of the valleys
+through which they flow; so that, although in many cases it appears
+that those larger valleys have been excavated at earlier periods by
+more powerful streams, or by the existing stream in a more powerful
+condition, still the great fact remains always equally plain, and
+equally admirable, that, whatever the nature and duration of the
+agencies employed, the earth was so shaped at first as to direct the
+currents of its rivers in the manner most healthy and convenient for
+man. The valley of the Rhone may have been in great part excavated, in
+early times, by torrents a thousand times larger than the Rhone; but
+it could not have been excavated at all, unless the mountains had been
+thrown at first into two chains, by which the torrents were set to
+work in a given direction. And it is easy to conceive how, under any
+less beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents
+of the earth might either have been covered with enormous lakes, as
+parts of North America actually are covered; or have become
+wildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the
+water would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the
+year desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole
+earth is not prepared for the habitation of man; only certain small
+portions are prepared for him,--the houses, as it were, of the human
+race, from which they are to look abroad upon the rest of the world;
+not to wonder or complain that it is not all house, but to be grateful
+for the kindness of the admirable building, in the house itself, as
+compared with the rest. It would be as absurd to think it an evil that
+all the world is not fit for us to inhabit, as to think it an evil
+that the globe is no larger than it is. As much as we shall ever need
+is evidently assigned to us for our dwelling-place; the rest, covered
+with rolling waves or drifting sands, fretted with ice or crested with
+fire, is set before us for contemplation in an uninhabitable
+magnificence. And that part which we are enabled to inhabit owes its
+fitness for human life chiefly to its mountain ranges, which, throwing
+the superfluous rain off as it falls, collect it in streams or lakes,
+and guide it into given places, and in given directions; so that men
+can build their cities in the midst of fields which they know will be
+always fertile, and establish the lines of their commerce upon streams
+which will not fail.
+
+[22] I attach great importance to the remaining contents of this
+passage, and have had occasion to insist on them at great length in
+recent lectures at Oxford.
+
+Nor is this giving of motion to water to be considered as confined
+only to the surface of the earth. A no less important function of the
+hills is in directing the flow of the fountains and springs from
+subterranean reservoirs. There is no miraculous springing up of water
+out of the ground at our feet; but every fountain and well is supplied
+from reservoirs among the hills, so placed as to involve some slight
+fall or pressure enough to secure the constant flowing of the stream;
+and the incalculable blessing of the power given to us, in most
+valleys, of reaching by excavation some point whence the water will
+rise to the surface of the ground in perennial flow, is entirely owing
+to the concave dispositions of the beds of clay or rock raised from
+beneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of enclosing hills.
+
+The second great use of mountains is to maintain a constant change in
+the currents and nature of the _air_. Such change would, of course,
+have been partly caused by difference in soil and vegetation, even if
+the earth had been level; but to a far less extent than it is now by
+the chains of hills which--exposing on one side their masses of rock
+to the full heat of the sun, (increased by the angle at which the rays
+strike on the slope,) and on the other casting a soft shadow for
+leagues over the plains at their feet--divide the earth not only into
+districts, but into climates; and cause perpetual currents of air to
+traverse their passes in a thousand different states; moistening it
+with the spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it
+hither and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it within
+clefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till it is as cold
+as November mists; then sending it forth again to breathe lightly
+across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be scorched among sunburnt
+shales and grassless crags; then drawing it back in moaning swirls
+through clefts of ice, and up into dewy wreaths above the snow-fields;
+then piercing it with strange electric darts and flashes of mountain
+fire, and tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass
+is tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when
+chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off plains.
+
+The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual change in the
+_soils_ of the earth. Without such provision the ground under
+cultivation would in a series of years become exhausted, and require
+to be upturned laboriously by the hand of man. But the elevations of
+the earth's surface provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher
+mountains suffer their summits to be broken into fragments, and to be
+cast down in sheets of massy rock, full, as we shall see presently, of
+every substance necessary for the nourishment of plants; these fallen
+fragments are again broken by frost, and ground by torrents, into
+various conditions of sand and clay--materials which are distributed
+perpetually by the streams farther and farther from the mountain's
+base. Every shower that swells the rivulet enables their waters to
+carry certain portions of earth into new positions, and exposes new
+banks of ground to be mined in their turn. That turbid foaming of the
+angry water,--that tearing down of bank and rock along the flanks of
+its fury,--are no disturbances of the kind course of nature; they are
+beneficent operations of laws necessary to the existence of man, and
+to the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more gently, but
+not less effectively, over all the surface of the lower undulating
+country; and each filtering thread of summer rain which trickles
+through the short turf of the uplands is bearing its own appointed
+burden of earth to be thrown down on some new natural garden in the
+dingles beneath.
+
+I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mountains. I
+do not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams from the
+moors of the higher ranges,--of the various medicinal plants which are
+nested among their rocks,--of the delicate pasturage which they
+furnish for cattle,--of the forests in which they bear timber for
+shipping,--the stones they supply for building, or the ores of metal
+which they collect into spots open to discovery, and easy for working.
+All these benefits are of a secondary or a limited nature. But the
+three great functions which I have just described, those of giving
+motion and change to water, air, and earth, are indispensable to human
+existence; they are operations to be regarded with as full a depth of
+gratitude as the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed
+multiply itself in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening
+ranges of dark mountain, which in nearly all ages of the world men
+have looked upon with aversion, or with terror, and shrunk back from
+as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, are in reality
+sources of life and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than all
+the bright fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed; the
+mountains feed, and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of
+fearlessness and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea;
+but we associate them unjustly. The sea-wave, with all its
+beneficence, is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the
+blue mountain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual
+mercy; and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other
+unshaken in its faithfulness, for ever bear the seal of their
+appointed symbolism:--
+
+"Thy _righteousness_ is like the great mountains;
+
+"Thy _judgments_ are a great deep."
+
+
+33. Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent
+muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its
+anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive
+energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the
+lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame,
+when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its
+beauty,--yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. This then
+is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit of
+the hills is action, that of the lowlands repose; and between these
+there is to be found every variety of motion and rest, from the
+inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to
+the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with
+the clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up
+their Titan heads to Heaven, saying, "I live for ever."
+
+
+34. Where they are,[23] they seem to form the world; no mere bank of a
+river here, or of a lane there, peeping out among the hedges or
+forests, but from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is
+theirs,--one adamantine dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield
+ourselves to the impression of their eternal unconquerable
+stubbornness of strength; their mass seems the least yielding, least
+to be softened, or in anywise dealt with by external force, of all
+earthly substance. And behold, as we look further into it, it is all
+touched and troubled, like waves by a summer breeze; rippled far more
+delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; _they_ only undulate along
+their surfaces--this rock trembles through its every fibre, like the
+chords of an Eolian harp, like the stillest air of spring, with the
+echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great
+mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep
+beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering
+of their substance. Other and weaker things seem to express their
+subjection to an Infinite Power only by momentary terrors: as the
+weeds bow down before the feverish wind, and the sound of the going in
+the tops of the taller trees passes on before the clouds, and the
+fitful opening of pale spaces on the dark water, as if some invisible
+hand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives warning of the anger that
+is to come, we may well imagine that there is a fear passing upon the
+grass, and leaves, and waters, at the presence of some great spirit
+commissioned to let the tempest loose; but the terror passes, and
+their sweet rest is perpetually restored to the pastures and the
+waves. Not so to the mountains. They, which at first seem strengthened
+beyond the dread of any violence or change, are yet also ordained to
+bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual fear. The tremor which fades
+from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed to all eternity upon
+the rock; and while things that pass visibly from birth to death may
+sometimes forget their feebleness, the mountains are made to possess a
+perpetual memorial of their infancy--that infancy which the prophet
+saw in his vision,[24]--"I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without
+form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the
+mountains, and lo, they _trembled_, and all the hills moved
+_lightly_."
+
+[23] Passage written after I had got by some years cooler and wiser than
+when I wrote No. 33, describing however the undulation of the gneiss
+rocks, which, 'where they are, seem, to form the world,' in terms more
+fanciful than I now like.
+
+[24] Utter misinterpretation of the passage. It is the old age, not the
+childhood of earth, which Jeremiah describes in this passage. See its
+true interpretation in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XLVI.
+
+
+35. The longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I
+examined them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of there
+being a vast Alpine plateau, or mass of elevated land, upon which
+nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set upon a table,
+removed, in most cases, far back from the edge of the plateau,--as if
+for fear of their falling; while the most majestic scenes in the Alps
+are produced, not so much by any violation of this law, as by one of
+the great peaks having apparently walked to the edge of the table to
+look over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the valley in its
+full height. This is the case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at
+Grindelwald, and with the Grande Jorasse above the Col de Ferret. But
+the raised bank or table is always intelligibly in existence, even in
+these apparently exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great
+peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but remain like the
+keeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by
+comparatively level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets
+of glacier writhe and flow, foaming about the feet of the dark central
+crests like the surf of an enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded
+rock, and islanding some fragment of it in the midst. And the result
+of this arrangement is a kind of division of the whole of Switzerland
+into an upper and lower mountain world,--the lower world consisting of
+rich valleys, bordered by steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks
+of mountain, more or less divided by ravines, through which glimpses
+are caught of the higher Alps; the upper world, reached after the
+first banks of 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height have been surmounted,
+consisting of comparatively level but most desolate tracts of moor and
+rock, half covered by glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true
+pinnacles of the chain. It can hardly be necessary to point out the
+perfect wisdom and kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for
+the safety of the inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the
+great peaks rose at once from the deepest valleys, every stone which
+was struck from their pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped
+from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground,
+over which no year would pass without recording some calamity of
+earth-slip or avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the
+stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving
+only naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping
+meadow and the chestnut glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast
+down at once into the warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the
+spring, causing furious inundation of every great river for a month or
+six weeks. The snow being then all thawed, except what lay upon the
+highest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would
+be supplied during the summer only by fountains, and the feeble
+tricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone, under such
+circumstances, would hardly be larger, in summer, than the Severn, and
+many Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All these
+calamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has
+been described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high
+peaks, instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon
+the desolate shelves, or shoulders, which everywhere surround the
+central crests. The soft banks which terminate these shelves,
+traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest
+wood, while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a
+climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so
+cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either
+form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even
+to the close of the year,--in either case supplying constant,
+abundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath,
+and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.
+
+Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,[25] is
+indeed sufficient reason for its existence, and to many people it may
+seem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can
+hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers
+of central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the
+actual first work of the Divine Master, on which I gaze? Was the great
+precipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust?
+Were its clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the
+letters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear
+its eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of Heaven?
+Or is it the descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under
+appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There
+can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by
+the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is _not_ as
+it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the
+wrecks of what it was. On these perhaps, of all mountains, the
+characters of decay are written most clearly; around these are spread
+most gloomily the memorials of their pride, and the signs of their
+humiliation.
+
+[25] Of course I had seen every other tried before giving this
+favourable judgment.
+
+What then were they once? The only answer is yet again--"Behold the
+cloud!"
+
+
+36. There are many spots among the inferior ridges of the Alps, such
+as the Col de Ferret, the Col d'Anterne, and the associated ranges of
+the Buet, which, though commanding prospects of great nobleness, are
+themselves very nearly types of all that is most painful to the human
+mind. Vast wastes of mountain ground,[26] covered here and there with
+dull grey grass or moss, but breaking continually into black banks of
+shattered slate, all glistening and sodden with slow tricklings of
+clogged, incapable streams; the snow-water oozing through them in a
+cold sweat, and spreading itself in creeping stains among their dust;
+ever and anon a shaking here and there, and a handful or two of their
+particles or flakes trembling down, one sees not why, into more total
+dissolution, leaving a few jagged teeth, like the edges of knives
+eaten away by vinegar, projecting, through the half-dislodged mass,
+from the inner rock; keen enough to cut the hand or foot that rests on
+them, yet crumbling as they wound, and soon sinking again into the
+smooth, slippery, glutinous heap; looking like a beach of black scales
+of dead fish cast ashore from a poisonous sea, and sloping away into
+foul ravines, branched down immeasurable slopes of barrenness, where
+the winds howl and wander continually, and the snow lies in wasted and
+sorrowful fields covered with sooty dust, that collects in streaks and
+stains at the bottom of all its thawing ripples.
+
+[26] This is a fourth volume passage,--and I will venture to say of it,
+as Albert Duerer, when he was pleased with his work--that for what it has
+to do, it cannot be much better done. It is a study on the Col de Bon
+Homme.
+
+I know of no other scenes so appalling as these in storm, or so woful
+in sunshine. Where, however, these same rocks exist in more favourable
+positions--that is to say, in gentler banks and at lower
+elevations--they form a ground for the most luxuriant vegetation; and
+the valleys of Savoy owe to them some of their loveliest
+solitudes--exquisitely rich pastures, interspersed with arable and
+orchard land, and shaded by groves of walnut and cherry. Scenes of
+this kind, and of that just described, so singularly opposed, and
+apparently brought together as foils to each other, are however
+peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which are both vast
+in elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland the same
+groups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain less
+elevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery.
+The severity of the climate, and the comparative durableness of the
+rock, forbid the rich vegetation; but the exposed summits, though
+barren, are not subject to laws of destruction so rapid and fearful as
+in Switzerland, and the natural colour of the rock is oftener
+developed in the purples and greys which, mingled with the heather,
+form the principal elements of the deep and beautiful distant blue of
+the British hills. Their gentler mountain streams also permit the beds
+of rock to remain in firm, though fantastic, forms along their banks,
+and the gradual action of the cascades and eddies upon the slaty
+cleavage produces many pieces of foreground scenery to which higher
+hills can present no parallel.
+
+
+37. Unlike Chamouni Aiguilles, there is no aspect of destruction about
+the Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating
+spires, yielding, flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual
+process of decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument,
+seemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls retaining yet the forms
+into which they were first engraven, and standing like an Egyptian
+temple;--delicately fronted, softly coloured, the suns of uncounted
+ages rising and falling upon it continually, but still casting the
+same line of shadows from east to west; still, century after century,
+touching the same purple stains on the lotus pillars; while the desert
+sand ebbs and flows about their feet, as those autumn leaves of rock
+lie heaped and weak about the base of the Cervin.
+
+Is not this a strange type in the very heart and height of these
+mysterious Alps--these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold,
+grey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at
+their feet, muttering and whispering to us garrulously in broken and
+dreaming fits, as it were, about their childhood,--is it not a strange
+type of the things which "out of weakness are made strong"? If one of
+these little flakes of mica sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along
+the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to
+float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it
+as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of
+the stream, and laid, (might it not have been thought?) for a hopeless
+eternity, in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble
+of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down
+there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth wasp to
+build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; what would it
+have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength
+as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame,
+out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should
+hew that Alpine tower?--that against _it_--poor, helpless mica
+flake!--the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath
+_it_--low-fallen mica flake!--the snowy hills should lie bowed like
+flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded
+blue; and around _it_--weak, wave-drifted mica flake!--the great war
+of the firmament should burst in thunder and yet stir it not; and the
+fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it
+into the air; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one
+by one as they rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed
+its abiding-place on the imperishable spire?
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: STONES.
+
+
+38. There are no natural objects out of which more can be learned than
+out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a
+patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen to
+some extent without patience, and are pleasant even in being half
+seen. Trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless;
+but the stone under his foot has, for carelessness, nothing in it but
+stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor
+good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart, and the
+unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and
+watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any
+other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is
+examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of
+Nature's work is so great, that into a single block, a foot or two in
+diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a
+small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking
+moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a
+stone in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than
+the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and
+incomparably richer in colour.
+
+
+39. On a Highland hillside are multitudinous clusters of fern and
+heather; on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine.
+The number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is
+in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler
+things. Indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the
+field of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten
+feet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just
+as much of the sky as that bank of mountain at Villeneuve; nay, in
+many respects, its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some
+help of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us
+of those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn
+mountain ground under the general and humble term of Banks, I mean to
+imply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences
+and the highest. But in this matter of superimposed _quantity_, the
+distinctions of rank are at once fixed. The heap of earth bears its
+few tufts of moss, or knots of grass; the Highland or Cumberland
+mountain, its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the
+bank at Martigny or Villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its
+rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them.... The minute
+mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory,
+when they are actually approached after three or four hours' climbing,
+turn into independent hills, with true _parks_ of lovely pasture-land
+enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts,
+and pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles,
+populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks
+of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have
+in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village,
+and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward
+coils as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net
+of the Flatterer.
+
+
+40. When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the
+weather, Nature finishes it in her own way. First she takes wonderful
+pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dent
+and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours which for
+fineness no human hand can follow; then she colours it; and every one
+of her touches of colour, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is
+a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and
+concealing wonders of structure.
+
+
+41. On the broken rocks in the foreground in the crystalline groups,
+the mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the
+task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of colour in their
+power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather
+over it in little brown bosses, like small cushions of velvet, made of
+mixed threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded over more subdued
+films of white and grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like
+hoar frost on fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange
+stalks with pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and
+faint purple passing into black, all woven together, and following
+with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of the
+stone they cherish, until it is charged with colour so that it can
+receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, or
+anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed
+with a soft dark leopard's skin, embroidered with arabesque of purple
+and silver.
+
+
+42. The colour of the white varieties of marble is of exquisite
+delicacy, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock; and it
+has always appeared to me a most wonderful ordinance--one of the most
+_marked_ pieces of purpose in the creation--that all the variegated
+kinds should be comparatively opaque, so as to set off the colour on
+the surface, while the white, which, if it had been opaque, would have
+looked somewhat coarse, (as for instance common chalk does,) is
+rendered just translucent enough to give an impression of extreme
+purity, but not so translucent as to interfere in the least with the
+distinctness of any forms into which it is wrought. The colours of
+variegated marbles are also for the most part very beautiful,
+especially those composed of purple, amber, and green, with white; and
+there seems something notably attractive to the human mind in the
+_vague_ and veined labyrinths of their arrangements.
+
+
+43. I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of
+brilliancy of colour with vigour of life or purity of substance. This
+is pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with
+which the particles of any substance unite in crystallization,
+corresponds in that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature; and
+it is a universal law, that according to the purity of any substance,
+and according to the energy of its crystallization, is its beauty or
+brightness. Pure earths are white when in powder; and the same earths,
+which are the constituents of clay and sand, form, when crystallized,
+the emerald, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and opal.
+
+
+44. As we pass between the hills which have been shaken by earthquake
+and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeed
+those of destruction. The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their
+fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among
+their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and
+its church tower, white through the storm-light, proclaims a renewed
+appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the
+earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no
+loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. It is
+just where "the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
+removed out of his place," that in process of years the fairest
+meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from
+between their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages,
+each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed
+no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the
+eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in
+simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient
+promise,--"Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction, when it
+cometh; for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and
+the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee."
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE: PLANTS AND FLOWERS.
+
+
+45. Wonderful, in universal adaptation to man's need, desire, and
+discipline, God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with
+beautiful means of life. First, a carpet, to make it soft for him;
+then a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of
+foliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain,
+that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish
+the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to
+be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments
+(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it
+had been if harder; useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic.
+Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm
+the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter
+winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according
+to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude
+of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold
+juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil,
+preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm;
+and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or
+force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring
+uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble
+tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
+the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of
+summer streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the
+transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or
+hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in
+entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with
+variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or
+ministering, at cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest
+joy of humanity.
+
+
+46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift
+by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty
+monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the
+avenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so
+eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the
+glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves
+that flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our
+understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless
+of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which
+men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.
+
+
+47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other
+trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground,
+clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its
+flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene
+resistance, self-contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under
+a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to
+its companies of pines, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and
+perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like
+the shadow of the one beside it--upright, fixed, spectral, as troops
+of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb
+for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them: those trees never
+heard human voice; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No
+foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs: all comfortless they stand,
+between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock; yet with such
+iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside
+them,--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of
+delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride--unnumbered,
+unconquerable.
+
+Then note farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's
+minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far
+as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief
+character in health is green and full _roundness_. It stands compact,
+like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and
+quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of
+being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery, for
+other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs; but the pine,
+growing either in luxuriant mass, or in happy isolation, allows no
+branch to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or
+down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there
+is nothing but green cone, and green carpet. Nor is it only softer,
+but in one sense more cheerful than other foliage, for it casts only a
+pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the
+ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in scattered groups,
+leaves the glades between emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own;
+narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew.
+And if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine
+glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear, but it is
+only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our
+English meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest pine-glade
+in Chamouni, "Fairies' Hollow." It is in the glen beneath the steep
+ascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding
+path which goes down from the top of the hill[27]--being indeed not
+truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a
+formidable precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over
+the Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory, many coloured, rises at
+the end of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which
+a little cascade falls, literally, down among the pines, for it is so
+light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that
+the pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without
+minding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence; and above, for
+ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.
+
+[27] The new road to Chamouni has been carried right through it. A
+cascade on the right, as you ascend, marks the place spoken of in the
+text,--once as lonely as Corrie-nan-shian.
+
+Other trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this, in
+fringes. You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for
+this reason,--it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the
+fiery change which has been noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises
+behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance
+of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about three or
+four degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in
+clear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I
+thought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves;
+but I believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them--every
+minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living
+always among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and
+themselves, the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendour to the
+sun itself.
+
+
+48. The Swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in
+anywise correspondent with ours. It was rather as fortresses of
+defence, than as spectacles of splendour, that the cliffs of the
+Rothslock bare rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their
+feet; and the training for which the mountain children had to thank
+the slopes of the Muotta-Thal, was in soundness of breath, and
+steadiness of limb, far more than in elevation of idea. But the point
+which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene
+which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is
+not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was
+not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though
+these were all peculiarly their possessions--that the three venerable
+cantons received their name. They were not called the States of the
+Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the _Forest_. And
+the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the
+spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the
+'Hill of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name
+of 'Under the Woods.'
+
+And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in
+Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman
+row southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest
+there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.
+Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the
+lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable
+falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices
+of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time the beat
+of a wave, slow lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies
+heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep
+grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn
+glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of
+twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the
+shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.
+
+
+49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the
+Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of
+thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian
+aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of
+Chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm
+swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of
+Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure
+streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing
+through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure,
+half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky
+slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,
+whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
+evergreens, were penetrated with it, as with rain. I cannot call it
+colour,--it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like
+the curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
+valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
+and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit the
+sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses
+of the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves
+of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their
+banks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air
+around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand
+separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind
+lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden
+floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and
+closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the
+motionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet
+lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the
+fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and
+fitful sound; and, over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and
+rose--the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to
+illumine--were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and
+orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the
+last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the
+Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
+
+
+50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity:
+children love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as
+they grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered;
+they are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as
+with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers
+in whose hearts rests the covenant of peace.
+
+
+51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond
+of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares
+about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in
+the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are
+scientifically interested in them, though even these in the
+nomenclature, rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their
+gardens.... But, the blossoming time of the year being principally
+spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that
+period, to stay in towns. A year or two ago a keen-sighted and
+eccentrically-minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to
+violate this national custom, and go to the Tyrol in spring, was
+passing through a valley near Landech with several similarly
+headstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the distance,
+belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English Queen.
+Was it a blue cloud, a blue horizontal bar of the air that Titian
+breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe
+again? Was it a mirage--a meteor? Would it stay to be
+approached?--(ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot
+of the mountain)--such questioning had they concerning it. My
+keen-sighted friend, alone, maintained it to be substantial;--whatever
+it might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of
+road were overpast, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed
+patiently, expanding still into richer breath and heavenlier glow--a
+belt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in
+spring, and in spring only; which being so, I observe most people
+prefer going in autumn.
+
+
+52. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a
+rose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will
+find, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the
+loveliest of all pure colours; and, secondly, that in the rose there
+is _no shadow_, except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are
+fuller in colour than its lights, owing to the translucency and
+reflective power of the leaves.
+
+
+53. Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of
+volatile substance? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a
+rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the
+air continually!
+
+
+54. In the range of inorganic nature I doubt if any object can be
+found more perfectly beautiful, than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen
+under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and
+changefulness; its surface and transparency alike exquisite; its light
+and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish,--the shadows
+sharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and
+multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted
+light.... If, passing to the edge of a sheet of it upon the lower
+Alps, early in May, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or
+three little round openings pierced in it; and through these,
+emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower,[28] whose small, dark,
+purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it
+has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly
+dying of very fatigue after its hard-won victory; we shall be, or we
+ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness
+from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds:
+there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an
+image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or
+senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be
+heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of
+us whose heart is rightly turned, or whose mind is clearly and surely
+sighted.
+
+[28] Soldanella Alpina. I think it is the only Alpine flower which
+actually pierces snow, though I have seen gentians filling thawed
+hoof-prints. Crocuses are languid till they have had sun for a day or
+two. But the soldanella enjoys its snow, at first, and afterwards its
+fields. I have seen it make a pasture look like a large lilac silk gown.
+
+
+55. It has been well shown by Dr. Herbert, that many plants are found
+alone on a certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because such
+soil is favourable to them, but because they alone are capable of
+existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its
+inhospitality removed. Now if we withdraw the plant from this
+position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth and
+maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing
+from it, at the same time, all rivals, which in such conditions Nature
+would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently
+developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in
+organization; but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which
+is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. It
+was intended and created by the Deity for the covering of those lonely
+spots where no other plant could live. It has been thereto endowed
+with courage and strength, and capacities of endurance; its character
+and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeding of its
+own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly
+destroyed and rooted out for its good alone; but in its right doing of
+its hard duty, and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope
+where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the
+Spirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as He covers the
+valleys with corn; and there, in its vanward place, and only there,
+where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing
+can take part of its honour, nor usurp its throne, are its strength
+and fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of God to be truly
+esteemed. The first time I saw the Soldanella Alpina, before spoken
+of, it was growing of magnificent size on a sunny Alpine pasture,
+among bleating of sheep, and lowing of cattle, associated with a
+profusion of Geum Montanum, and Ranunculus Pyrenaeus. I noticed it only
+because new to me--nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven
+flower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the
+higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds; and, as I described it,
+piercing through an edge of avalanche which in its retiring had left
+the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burnt by recent fire. The
+plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its
+efforts,--but it was then that I comprehended its ideal character, and
+saw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of
+the earth.
+
+
+56. GRASSES.--Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels,
+mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain,
+with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness
+and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious
+evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at noon, but
+with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of
+grainbells, all a-chime.
+
+
+57. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly
+its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems,
+there of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very
+little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a
+point,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no
+means a creditable or apparently much-cared-for example of Nature's
+workmanship, made, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be
+cast into the oven,--and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
+flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
+think of it well, and judge whether, of all the gorgeous flowers that
+beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
+the eyes, or good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
+oak, scented citron, burdened vine--there be any by man so deeply
+loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green.
+And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to
+the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious
+enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful
+spears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the thoughts of
+all that we ought to recognise in these words. All spring and summer
+is in them--the walks by silent, scented paths--the rests in noonday
+heat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life
+and meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world falling in
+emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would
+have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust. Pastures beside
+the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes
+of down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea, crisp lawns, all
+dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine,
+dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving
+voices,--all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not
+all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in
+our own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of
+that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us
+more and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the springtime
+among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the
+roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
+gentians, and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
+as you follow the winding mountain path, beneath arching boughs, all
+veiled with blossom--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green
+banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue
+water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps filling all the air
+with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the
+waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among
+the shadows of the pines; and we may perhaps at last know the meaning
+of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon
+the mountains."
+
+Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all,
+from Isaiah xl. 6, we find the grass and flowers are types, in their
+passing, of the passing of human life, and in their excellence, of the
+excellence of human life; and this in twofold way: first by their
+beneficence, and then by their endurance--the grass of the earth, in
+giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and
+stroke of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness
+for our rest, and in its bending before the wave. But, understood in
+the broad human and Divine sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed"--(as
+opposed to the fruit tree yielding fruit)--includes a third family of
+plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the
+great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_
+offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment;
+consider the association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery
+with the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and
+consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet
+thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues
+definitely set forth by the three families of plants--not arbitrarily
+or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
+for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in
+the grass for food and beauty--"Consider the lilies of the field, how
+they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." 2nd. Humility; in the
+grass for rest--"A bruised reed shall he not break." 3rd. Love; in the
+grass for clothing, (because of its swift kindling,)--"The smoking
+flax shall he not quench." And then finally observe the confirmation
+of these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy,
+relating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in
+the Old Testament, namely that contained in the closing chapters of
+Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and
+because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever
+can be taken, the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a
+measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of
+the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
+the church, or its labours, are to be measured by humility; and its
+territory, or land, by love.
+
+
+58. LEAVES motionless. The strong pines wave above them, and the weak
+grasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth
+with a peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock,
+moveless as they, the rubied crests of Alpine rose flush in the low
+rays of morning.
+
+
+59. MOSSES.--Meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling
+with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity,
+covering with strange and tender honour the scarred disgrace of ruin,
+laying quiet finger on the trembling stones to teach them rest. No
+words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are
+delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to
+tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green,--the starred
+divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could
+spin porphyry as we do glass,--the traceries of intricate silver, and
+fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre
+into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all
+subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of
+grace? They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet, or
+love-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the
+wearied child his pillow.
+
+And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when
+all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and
+gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the
+blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time;
+but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers
+for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave.
+
+
+60. LICHENS.--As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the
+most honoured of the earth-children. Unfading as motionless, the worm
+frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they
+neither blanch in heat, nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered,
+constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal
+tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the
+tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the
+unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds
+of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted
+snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its
+cowslip gold,--far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen spots
+rest, star-like, on the stone: and the gathering orange stain, upon
+the edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand
+years.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+EDUCATION.
+
+
+61. The most helpful and sacred work which can at present be done for
+humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching
+must be done) not how "to better themselves," but how to "satisfy
+themselves." It is the curse of every evil nature and evil creature to
+eat and _not_ be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall
+eat and be satisfied; and as there is only one kind of water which
+quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which
+satisfies all hunger--the bread of justice or righteousness; which
+hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of
+Heaven; but hungering after the bread or wages of unrighteousness,
+shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And in order to
+teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the
+art of joy and humble life--this, at present, of all arts or sciences,
+being the one most needing study. Humble life; that is to say,
+proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet
+continuance: not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of
+fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so also
+not excluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of
+accumulation;--the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full
+of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind
+pleasure;--therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.
+
+
+62. We shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed,
+has been a faithful and sacred element of feeling; that is to say,
+supposing all the circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two
+individuals, the one who loves nature most will be always found to
+have more capacity for _faith_ in God than the other. Nature-worship
+will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power
+of a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or
+controvert; and where that nature-worship is innocently
+pursued--_i.e._, with due respect to other claims on time, feeling,
+and exertion, and associated with the higher principles of
+religion,--it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which by
+no other means can be conveyed.
+
+
+63. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with
+the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is connected properly with
+the benevolence and liberty[29] of the age; that it is precisely the
+most healthy element which distinctively belongs to us; and that out
+of it, cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness
+and as a duty, results will spring of an importance at present
+inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's
+history, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true
+field for his energies, and the true relations between him and his
+Maker.
+
+[29] I forget, now, what I meant by 'liberty' in this passage; but I
+often used the word in my first writings, in a good sense, thinking of
+Scott's moorland rambles and the like. It is very wonderful to me, now,
+to see what hopes I had once: but Turner was alive, then; and the sun
+used to shine, and rivers to sparkle.
+
+
+64. To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk, over
+not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing
+of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion
+to its rapidity.
+
+Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely
+"being sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a
+parcel.
+
+
+65. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of
+the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavouring, however
+clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily exert in
+amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for
+instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over
+other people's.
+
+
+66. In order to define what is fairest, you must delight in what is
+fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such
+delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking
+to be understood; now I cannot, any more, for it seems to me that no
+one regards them. Wherever I look or travel, in England or abroad, I
+see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem
+to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses, and be able
+to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they
+defile. Thus the railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen, and
+that round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the
+power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the
+place, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.
+
+
+67. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being
+taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. The
+intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the
+hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag into the dark lake, has
+associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever
+since. Two other things I remember as, in a sort, beginnings of
+life;--crossing Shap-fells, being let out of the chaise to run up the
+hills; and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, on a winter's
+morning, when the rocks were hung with icicles; these being
+culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually
+indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me
+near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,
+as early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or
+twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to
+me in anything.
+
+
+68. A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to
+lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and time; a wise man, first
+to gain them, then to animate them.
+
+
+69. I suspect that system-makers in general are not of much more use,
+each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie
+cherries upon sticks, for the more portableness of the same. To
+cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance;
+but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their
+crabbed stalks, it is a better connection for them than any others;
+and if they cannot, then so that they be not bruised, it makes to a
+boy of practical disposition not much difference whether he gets them
+by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick.
+
+
+70. Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift
+is to get good out of all things and all persons.
+
+
+71. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and
+if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and
+faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all
+cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such
+burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men,
+and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there
+must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly
+trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a
+gift also to his race for ever.
+
+
+72. There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it
+is capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures; and in that
+unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the
+beholding of all other creatures that can behold. So the unity of
+spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and
+taking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and
+their strength; for their strength is in their co-working and army
+fellowship, and their delight is in their giving and receiving of
+alternate and perpetual good; their inseparable dependency on each
+other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their
+Creator's. And so the unity of earthly creatures is their power, and
+their peace; not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones
+and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and the living
+power of support; of hands that hold each other and are still.[30]
+
+[30] A long, affected, and obscure second volume sentence, written in
+imitation of Hooker. One short sentence from Ecclesiastes is the sum of
+it: "How can one be warm alone?"
+
+
+73. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis
+of Assisi, who spoke never to bird, nor to cicada, nor even to wolf
+and beasts of prey, but as his brother;--and so we find are moved the
+minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from
+the 'Mariner' of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in
+the 'Hartleap Well'--
+
+  "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
+  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"--
+
+and again in the 'White Doe' of Rylstone, with the added teaching,
+that anguish of our own
+
+  "Is tempered and allayed by sympathies
+  Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
+  Even to the inferior kinds;"--
+
+so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic
+faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect,[31]
+than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself cat, tiger,
+leopard, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of
+cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes sparingly and
+at intervals use against each other for their necessities.
+
+[31] I am more and more grieved, as I re-read this and other portions of
+the most affected and weak of all my books, (written in a moulting time
+of my life,)--the second volume of 'Modern Painters,'--at its morbid
+violence of passion and narrowness of thought. Yet, at heart, the book
+was, like my others, honest; and in substance it is mostly good; but all
+boiled to rags.
+
+
+74. He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass
+beneath his feet, nor the creatures which live not for his uses,
+filling those spaces in the universe which he needs not: while, on the
+other hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving
+all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them every
+one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than
+he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched
+more truly.[32]
+
+[32] Morbidly Franciscan, again! and I am really compelled to leave out
+one little bit my friend liked,--as all kindly and hopeful women
+would,--about everything turning out right, and being to some good end.
+For we have no business whatever with the ends of things, but with their
+beings; and their beings are often entirely bad.
+
+
+75. Things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never
+_completely_. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but
+we may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every individual
+temper will see something different in it; but supposing the tempers
+honest, all the differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness
+of perception will show us something new; but the old and
+first-discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only
+modified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually
+more beautiful in its harmony with them, and more approved as a part
+of the infinite truth.
+
+
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+MORALITIES.
+
+
+76. When people read, "The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by
+Christ," do they suppose it means that the law was ungracious and
+untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and
+truth for fulfilment;--the whole forming one glorious Trinity of
+judgment, mercy, and truth.[33] And if people would but read the text
+of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of
+superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they
+are intended to make most personally their own, (the Psalms,) it is
+always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms
+respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost;
+but those respecting the Law are always full of delight. David cannot
+contain himself for joy in thinking of it,--he is never weary of its
+praise: "How love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thy
+testimonies are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter also than honey
+and the honeycomb."
+
+[33] A great deal of the presumption and narrowness caused by my having
+been bred in the Evangelical schools, and which now fill me with shame
+and distress in re-reading 'Modern Painters,' is, to my present mind,
+atoned for by the accurate thinking by which I broke my way through to
+the great truth expressed in this passage, which all my later writings,
+without exception, have been directed to maintain and illustrate.
+
+
+77. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which,
+in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know
+the close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling
+upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing
+Himself to His disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something
+pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this
+manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were
+sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied
+agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.
+But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily
+work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the
+literal rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing.
+They say unto him, We also go with thee." True words enough, and
+having far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught
+nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold!
+a figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but
+their fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them
+simply if they had caught anything. They say, No, and it tells them to
+cast again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his
+hand to look who it is; and though the glistening of the sea, too,
+dazzles him, he makes out who it is at last; and poor Simon, not to be
+outrun this time, tightens his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in
+over the nets. One would have liked to see him swim those hundred
+yards, and stagger to his knees upon the beach.
+
+Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as
+men in general do get in this world to its true shore, much impeded by
+that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes"; but they get
+there--seven of them in all; first the Denier, and then the slowest
+believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two
+throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.
+
+They sit down on the shore, face to face with Him, and eat their
+broiled fish as He bids. And then to Peter, all dripping still,
+shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side
+of the coal-fire,--thinking a little perhaps of what happened by
+another coal-fire, when it was colder, and having had no word changed
+with him by his Master, since that look of His,--to him so amazed,
+comes the question, "Simon, lovest thou Me?" Try to feel that a
+little; and think of it till it is true to you: and then take up that
+infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy,--Raphael's cartoon of the charge
+to Peter. Note first the bold fallacy--the putting _all_ the Apostles
+there, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy,
+by putting them all in the background while Peter receives the charge,
+and making them all witnesses to it. Note the handsomely curled hair
+and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the
+sea-mists, and on the slimy decks; note their convenient dresses for
+going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and
+goodly fringes--all made to match;--an apostolic fishing costume. Note
+how Peter especially, (whose chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_
+about him, and naked limbs,) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as
+to kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor
+lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of
+villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the
+whole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would have been
+naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may be shown. The
+simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our
+belief of the whole thing taken away. There is visibly no possibility
+of that group even having existed, in any place, or on any occasion.
+It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes,
+muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.
+
+
+78. Among the children of God, there is always that fearful and bowed
+apprehension of His majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to
+Him which is called the Fear of God; yet of real and essential fear
+there is not any, but clinging of confidence to Him as their Rock,
+Fortress, and Deliverer; and perfect love, and casting out of fear; so
+that it is not possible that, while the mind is rightly bent on Him,
+there should be dread of anything earthly or supernatural; and the
+more dreadful seems the height of His majesty, the less fear they feel
+that dwell in the shadow of it. "Of whom shall I be afraid?"
+
+
+79. If for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a
+claim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God's demands from
+them, we could substitute a display of His kindness to them; if side
+by side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and
+promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of
+an awful Deity, which men, though they cannot, and dare not deny, are
+always unwilling, sometimes unable to conceive, we were to show them a
+near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent Deity, whose presence
+makes the earth itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf
+children sitting in the market-place.
+
+
+80. If not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with
+what divine lines and light the exercise of godliness and charity will
+mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what
+darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not
+any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a
+new fairness upon the features.
+
+
+81. The love of the human race is increased by their individual
+differences, and the unity of the creature, made perfect by each
+having something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a
+thousand various necessities and various gratitudes; humility in each
+rejoicing to admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself,
+and each being in some respect the complement of his race.
+
+
+82. They who are as the angels of God in heaven, yet cannot be
+conceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and
+affections upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the
+child, taken early to his place, cannot be imagined to wear there such
+a body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who had
+finished his course and kept the faith on earth. And so, whatever
+perfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the tried
+or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in
+glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of
+occupying till their Lord come; different dispensations of trial and
+of trust, of sorrows and support, both in their own inward, variable
+hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace; of the gourd
+shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day, or eleventh
+hour, of the house unroofed by faith, or the clouds opened by
+revelation; differences in warning, in mercies, in sickness, in signs,
+in time of calling to account; alike only they all are by that which
+is not of them, but the gift of God's unchangeable mercy: "I will give
+unto this last even as unto thee."
+
+
+83. The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual, no unworthy
+one; but a longing for renovation, and for escape from a state whose
+every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one
+in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection.
+Hence the great call of Christ to men, that call on which St.
+Augustine fixed as the essential expression of Christian hope, is
+accompanied by the promise of rest; and the death bequest of Christ to
+men, is peace.
+
+
+84. He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the
+companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent,
+there, are the wild love, and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's
+pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the
+departed spirit, for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the
+future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to
+the dust. But the lessons which men receive as individuals, they do
+not learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest
+descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the
+tombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honour to
+the ashes, which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease
+them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their
+busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps,
+which God has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that they
+may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by
+their decay.
+
+
+85. In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north
+transept, there is a monument by Jacopo della Quercia to Ilaria di
+Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more beautiful or
+perfect than other examples of the same period; but as furnishing an
+instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness
+of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life,
+sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.
+She is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet; not on the
+side, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow,
+in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive
+imitation of pressure.--It is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken
+for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the
+sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is
+set and quiet; there is that about them which forbids breath;
+something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both.
+The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are
+laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. The
+feet are hidden by the drapery, and the form of the limbs concealed,
+but not their tenderness.
+
+
+86. I do not know any district possessing a more pure or uninterrupted
+fulness of mountain character, (and that of the highest order,) or
+which appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than
+that which borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and
+Martigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone,
+rising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding
+stairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders
+of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an
+industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks,
+smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the
+backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring of
+the tufts of moss and roots of herb, which little by little gather a
+feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow slip
+of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade; and
+in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky
+casque. The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among
+these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets that seem
+always to have chosen the steepest places to come down for the sake of
+the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that, as
+the wind takes them with all the grace, but with none of the
+formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and
+spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the
+lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and
+closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten
+with silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of
+sable stone; until at last, gathered altogether again,--except perhaps
+some chance drops caught on the apple blossom, where it has budded a
+little nearer the cascade than it did last spring,--they find their
+way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with
+quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass-blades, and
+looking only like their shadows but presently emerging again in little
+startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered
+suddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill.
+Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope
+together in the sunshine towards the brows of ravines, where the pines
+take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting
+roar, in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down, pale from
+the glaciers, filling all the chasms with enchanted cold, beating
+themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves
+cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. The
+mountain paths stoop to those glens in forky zigzags, leading to some
+grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the
+ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to
+its parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up
+the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the
+openings in the pines thin with excess of light; and, in its clear
+consuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are
+gathered into solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange
+faint silence of possession by the sunshine, which has in it so deep a
+melancholy, full of power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the
+walls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds,
+like the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam
+flashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength,
+lifted above all sorrows, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the
+air by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two
+golden clouds.
+
+High above all sorrow? Yes; but not unwitnessing to it. The traveller
+on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf, and
+strikes the pebbles gaily over the edge of the mountain road, sees
+with a glance of delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that
+nestle along those sloping orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of
+the pines. Here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes
+hardship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship
+of the human soul with nature. It is not so. The wild goats that leap
+along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of
+God as the men that toil among them,--perhaps more. Enter the street
+of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy
+foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. Here,
+it is torpor--not absolute suffering--not starvation or disease; but
+darkness of calm enduring: the spring, known only as the time of the
+scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as
+a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. They do
+not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They
+understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality,
+faith--these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so
+happier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank
+unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to
+see at the foot of their low death-beds a pale figure upon a cross,
+dying, also patiently;--in this they are different from the cattle and
+from the stones; but, in all this, unrewarded, as far as concerns the
+present life. For them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit;
+for them, neither advance nor exultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark
+night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life ebbs away. No
+books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest,--except only sometimes a
+little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls
+thin and far in the mountain air; a pattering of a few prayers, not
+understood, by the altar-rails of the dimly gilded chapel,--and so,
+back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken--that
+cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous
+stones, and unlightened even in their religion, except by the vague
+promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and
+obscured by an unspeakable horror--a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom,
+coiling up with the incense; and amidst the images of tortured bodies
+and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them,
+dashed more deeply than for others with gouts of blood.
+
+
+87. A Highland scene is beyond doubt pleasant enough in its own way;
+but, looked close at, has its shadows.[34] Here, for instance, is the
+very fact of one--as pretty as I can remember,--having seen many. It
+is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by
+jutting rocks, and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it
+to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into
+quicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then,
+first islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes
+away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash and
+alder. The autumn sun, low, but clear, shines on the scarlet
+ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and
+there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies
+of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket,
+the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to
+the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and
+the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first
+stayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current
+plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on
+three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which
+the foam slips in detached snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool
+beneath, the water circles slowly like black oil; a little butterfly
+lies on its back, the wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs
+feebly quivering; a fish arises, and it is gone. Lower down the
+stream, I can see over a knoll the green and damp turf roofs of four
+or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the
+cattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by
+a few ill-set stepping stones, with here and there a flat slab on the
+tops, where they have sunk out of sight;--and at the turn of the brook
+I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog--a picturesque and pretty
+group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I
+know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as
+the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old
+tartan jacket through, so sharp are they.
+
+[34] Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an
+amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the
+Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of
+Italy.
+
+
+88. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the
+solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the
+reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and
+motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and
+wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he
+never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious,
+like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves
+and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion
+shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the
+sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the
+dead beneath were struggling in their sleep. Scattered blocks of black
+stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon
+another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze
+stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy
+ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled
+altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a
+solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds
+stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the
+plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier,
+melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral
+mourners, passing from a nation's grave.
+
+
+89. I was coming down one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above
+Montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where I could
+get no water, and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at the
+turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen, into a
+hollowed pine trunk, I stooped to it, and drank deeply. As I raised my
+head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, "Celui qui
+boira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif." I turned, not understanding
+for a moment what was meant, and saw one of the hill peasants,
+probably returning to his chalet from the market place at Vevay or
+Villeneuve. As I looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he
+went on with the verse: "Mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui
+donnerai, n'aura jamais soif."
+
+
+90. It may perhaps be permitted me[35] to mark the significance of the
+earliest mention of mountains in the Mosaic books; at least of those
+in which some Divine appointment or command is stated respecting them.
+They are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from the
+two judgments of water and fire. The Ark rests upon the mountains of
+Ararat; and man, having passed through the great Baptism unto death,
+kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles
+with the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving.
+Again; from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of
+the Deity to His servant is, "Escape to the mountain;" and the morbid
+fear of the hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in
+places of luxury and sin, is strangely marked in Lot's complaining
+reply, "I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." The
+third mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: "Abraham
+lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off." "The Place," the
+mountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed
+of Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in
+that vow: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
+mine help." And the fourth is the delivery of the law on Sinai. It
+seemed then to the monks that the mountains were appointed by their
+Maker to be to man refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and
+altars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards
+connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the
+death, after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed
+Priest; the death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver; and
+lastly, with the assumption of His office, by the Eternal Priest,
+Lawgiver, and Saviour.
+
+[35] With reference to the choice of mountain dwellings by the greater
+monastic orders.
+
+Observe the connection of these three events. Although the _time_ of
+the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by God's displeasure, we
+have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that
+the _manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or
+dishonourable to them. Far from this, it cannot, I think, be doubted
+that in the denial of the permission to enter the Promised Land, the
+whole punishment of their sin was included; and that, as far as
+regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for
+them by their Master, in all tenderness and love, and with the full
+purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. It
+might have seemed to _us_ more honourable that both should have been
+permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Tabernacle, the
+congregation of Israel watching by their side; and all whom they loved
+gathered together to receive the last message from the lips of the
+meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed
+priest. But it was not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize
+that going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. He who
+had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up
+his own spirit. He who had stood among them between the dead and the
+living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to
+him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment
+more, going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and
+deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk in thought with
+those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of
+Israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp,
+towards the slopes of Mount Hor; talking together for the last time,
+as step by step they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour
+after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as
+they climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one subdued,
+showed, amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that
+long desert journey, now at last to close. But who shall enter into
+the thoughts of the High Priest as his eye followed those paths of
+ancient pilgrimage; and through the silence of the arid and endless
+hills, stretching even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of
+those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own
+ministries revealed to him; and that other Holy of Holies, of which
+the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil,
+the firmament of his Father's dwelling, opened to him still more
+brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death?--until at last,
+on the shadeless summit, from him on whom sin was to be laid no more,
+from him on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press
+their graven fire no longer, the brother and the son took breastplate
+and ephod, and left him to his rest. There is indeed a secretness in
+this calm faith, and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is
+difficult for us to enter; but the death of Moses himself is more
+easily to be conceived, and had in it circumstances still more
+touching as regards the influence of the external scene. For forty
+years Moses had not been alone. The care and burden of all the people,
+the weight of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him
+continually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if he had
+conceived them; their tears had been his meat night and day, until he
+had felt as if God had withdrawn His favour from him, and he had
+prayed that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness. And now
+at last the command came, "Get thee up into this mountain." The weary
+hands, that had been so long stayed up against the enemies of Israel,
+might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for
+the shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his
+feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain
+path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim; not strange to his
+aged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain herbage, and the
+broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the silence of
+uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, as now, with
+none beside him but God, he had led his flocks so often; and which he
+had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power to make
+of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of
+deliverance. It was not to embitter the last hours of his life that
+God restored to him for a day the beloved solitudes he had lost, and
+breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the
+world in which he had laboured, and sinned, far beneath his feet in
+that mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten
+for ever. The Dead Sea--a type of God's anger understood by him, of
+all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the
+sea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with
+his Master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it the fair hills of
+Judah, and the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening
+light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant
+fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, with his
+unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost
+rocks, with angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his
+spirit, he put off his earthly armour. We do deep reverence to his
+companion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven;
+but was his death less noble whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales
+of Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the
+knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called in the
+fulness of time, to talk with that Lord upon Hermon of the death that
+He should accomplish at Jerusalem?
+
+And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of
+the resurrection of these two prophets. We are all of us too much in
+the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable,
+taking place in the life of Christ for some purpose not by us to be
+understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of His divinity
+by brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of
+the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen
+apostles. And in this, as in many other events recorded by the
+Evangelists, we lose half the meaning, and evade the practical power
+upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our
+Lord was "perfect man,"--"tempted in all things like as we are." Our
+preachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to
+explain the union of the Divinity with the Manhood--an explanation
+which certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature
+of Deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend God. They never can
+explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only
+succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness
+of either. The thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of
+this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. We never think of
+Christ enough as God, never enough as Man; the instinctive habit of
+our minds being always to miss of the Divinity, and the reasoning and
+enforced habit to miss of the humanity. We are afraid to harbour in
+our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of
+our Lord as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human
+will, and affected by events of human life, as a finite creature is:
+and yet one half of the efficiency of His atonement, and the whole of
+the efficiency of His example, depend on His having been this to the
+full. Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the
+human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite preparation for
+His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six days before; then
+takes with Him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart."
+From an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on Him the
+ministry of life, He had beheld and rejected the kingdoms of the
+earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the
+ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as in
+Gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to be done alone.
+
+The tradition is that the Mount of Transfiguration was the summit of
+Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a
+mountain "_apart_," being in those years both, inhabited and
+fortified. All the immediately preceding ministries of Christ had been
+at Cesarea Philippi. There is no mention of travel southward in the
+six days that intervened between the warning given to His disciples
+and the going up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the
+southward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is indeed the
+centre of all the Promised Land, from the entering in of Hamath unto
+the river of Egypt; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs
+of Jordan descended to the valleys of Israel? Along its mighty forest
+avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet
+dashed in the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first
+recorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before He
+knelt, could see to the south all the dwellings of the people that had
+sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of Zabulon and of
+Naphtali, Galilee of the nations,--could see, even with His human
+sight, the gleam of that lake by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a
+place loved by Him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left
+unto them desolate; and chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the
+hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home; hills on which yet
+the stones lay loose that had been taken up to cast at Him when He
+left them for ever.
+
+"And as He prayed, two men stood by Him." Among the many ways in which
+we miss the help and hold of Scripture, none is more subtle than our
+habit of supposing that, even as man, Christ was free from the fear of
+death. How could He then have been tempted as we are?--since among all
+the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than
+that fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a unity which we can
+never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as His sorrow
+for Lazarus with the consciousness of His power to restore him; but it
+_had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the
+presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those
+two at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the
+work of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now in the
+fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the
+ministrants come to Him from the grave. But, from the grave,
+conquered. One from that tomb under Abarim, which His own hand had
+sealed long ago; the other, from the rest into which he had entered
+without seeing corruption. "There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and
+spake of His decease." Then, when the prayer is ended, the task
+accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at Bethlehem, the full
+glory falls upon Him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to His
+everlasting Sonship and power. "Hear ye Him."
+
+If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavour to
+follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious men of bygone days,
+closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and
+sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may
+perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if
+we neither seek any influence for good, nor submit to it unsought, in
+scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as
+inspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they had any task
+or trial laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of
+spirit. Nor perhaps should we have unprofitably entered into the mind
+of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the
+chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes
+admit the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their
+solitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our race; and
+indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the
+earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of His terror on
+Sinai, these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of
+all good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of
+His mercy, that fell, snowlike, on the Mount of Transfiguration.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+
+Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Frondes Agrestes, by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRONDES AGRESTES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31045.txt or 31045.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/4/31045/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Chandra Friend and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/31045.zip b/31045.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b03f10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31045.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39c74cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #31045 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31045)