r 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, neglect 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 ave