_, and that even the fissures or edges which appear
perfectly straight have _almost_ always some delicate sympathy with the
curves. Occasionally, however, as in the separate beds which form the
spur or horn of the Aiguille Blaitiere, seen in true profile in Plate
+29+, Fig. 3, the straightness is so accurate that, not having brought a
rule with me up the glacier, I was obliged to write under my sketch,
"Not possible to draw it straight enough." Compare also the lines
sloping to the left in Fig. 38.

Sec. 19. "But why not give everything just as it is; without caring what is
dominant and what subordinate?"

You cannot. Of all the various impossibilities which torment and
humiliate the painter, none are more vexatious than that of drawing a
mountain form. It is indeed impossible enough to draw, by resolute care,
the foam on a wave, or the outline of the foliage of a large tree; but
in these cases, when care is at fault, carelessness will help, and the
dash of the brush will in some measure give wildness to the churning of
the foam, and infinitude to the shaking of the leaves. But chance will
not help us with the mountain. Its fine and faintly organized edge seems
to be definitely traced against the sky; yet let us set ourselves
honestly to follow it, and we find, on the instant, it has disappeared:
and that for two reasons. The first, that if the mountain be lofty, and
in light, it is so faint in color that the eye literally cannot trace
its separation from the hues next to it. The other day I wanted the
contour of a limestone mountain in the Valais, distant about seven
miles, and as many thousand feet above me; it was barren limestone; the
morning sun fell upon it, so as to make it almost vermilion color, and
the sky behind it a bluish green. Two tints could hardly have been more
opposed, but both were so subtle, that I found it impossible to see
accurately the line that separated the vermilion from the green. The
second, that if the contour be observed from a nearer point, or looked
at when it is dark against the sky, it will be found composed of
millions of minor angles, crags, points, and fissures, which no human
sight or hand can draw finely enough, and yet all of which have effect
upon the mind.

Sec. 20. The outline shown as dark against the sky in Plate +29+, Fig. 2 is
about a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, yards of the top of the ridge
of Charmoz, running from the base of the aiguille down to the
Montanvert