, "is not essential to my work, nor concealment, nor softness; but
curvature is: and if I must produce my forms by breaking them, the
fracture itself shall be in curves. If, instead of dew and sunshine, the
only instruments I am to use are the lightning and the frost, then their
forked tongues and crystal wedges shall still work out my laws of tender
line. Devastation instead of nurture may be the task of all my elements,
and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated ruin; but the
appointments of typical beauty which have been made over all creatures
shall not therefore be abandoned; and the rocks shall be ruled, in their
perpetual perishing, by the same ordinances that direct the bending of
the reed and the blush of the rose."

FOOTNOTES

[57] See, for explanatory statements, Appendix 2.

[58] I have been able to examine these conditions with much care in
the chain of Mont Blanc only, which I chose for the subject of
investigation both as being the most interesting to the general
traveller, and as being the only range of the central mountains
which had been much painted by Turner. But I believe the singular
arrangements of beds which take place in this chain have been found
by the German geologists to prevail also in the highest peaks of the
Western Alps; and there are a peculiar beauty and providence in them
which induce me to expect that farther inquiries may justify our
attributing them to some very extensive law of the earth's
structure. See the notes from De Saussure in Appendix 2.

[59] That is to say, as it appears to me. There are some points of
the following statements which are disputed among geologists; the
reader will find them hereafter discussed at greater length.

[60] Running, at that point very nearly, N. E. and S. W., and
dipping under the ice at an angle of about seventy degrees.

[61] It was often of great importance to me to ascertain these
_apparent_ slopes with some degree of correctness. In order to do so
without the trouble of carrying any instrument (except my compass
and spirit-level), I had my Alpine pole made as even as a round rule
for about a foot in the middle of its length. Taking the bearing of
the mountain, placing the pole at right angles to the bearing, and
adjusting it by the spirit-level, I brought the edge of a piece of
finely cut pasteboard parallel, in a vertical plane (plumbed