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keeps of castles far withdrawn, surrounded, league beyond league, by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