rception in the human soul. Words gush
forth from him in a fervour of gratitude for the pleasures of the eye.
He may measure and weigh, he may set out as an emissary of cold
scientific investigation: he returns hot with admiration and raving of
the marvels of God upon the hills. But even he reaches a point where
the realization of the utter inadequacy of expression paralyses the
desire to convey the emotion to others. "I was absolutely struck dumb by
the extraordinary majesty of this scene," he writes of one evening, "and
watched it silently till the red light faded from the highest summits."

Verestchagin astonished his wife by painting his studies of snow in the
Himalayas at an altitude of 14,000 feet, tormented by hunger and thirst
and supported by two coolies, who held him on each side. She had the
pluck and the endurance to follow him on his long climbs, but being a
less exalted mortal, her sense of fitness was unduly strained by the
intensity of Verestchagin's devotion to clouds and mountain-tops. "His
face is so frightfully swollen," she tells us, "that his eyes look
merely like two wrinkles, the sun scorches his head, his hand can
scarcely hold the palette, and yet he insists on finishing his sketches.
I cannot imagine," she reflects, "how Verestchagin could make such
studies." There were, nevertheless, occasions when the inaction,
following on intense aesthetic emotion, stayed Verestchagin's busy brush.
One day, relates Madame Verestchagin, he went out to sketch the sunset:

He prepared his palette, but the sight was so beautiful that he
waited in order to examine it better. Several thousand feet below
us all was wrapped in a pure blue shadow; the summits of the
peaks were resplendent in purple flames. Verestchagin waited and
waited and would not begin his sketch. "By and by, by and by,"
said he; "I want to look at it still; it is splendid!" He
continued to wait, he waited until the end of the evening--until
the sun was set and the mountains were enveloped in dark shadows.
Then he shut up his paint-box and returned home.

As I read these lines I find myself wondering how many paint-boxes have
been shut up by the sight of the mountains. I know many have been
opened, and, amongst these, not a few which might have served humanity
better by remaining shut. But we may safely assume that despite the
general tendency of mountain worshippers to attempt to paint--in colours
strong a