often turn to
mountain scenery at least for similes. And it could not be
otherwise; for the immanent ideas here manifested are
self-assertive in character and specially rich in number and
variety. As it has been well expressed, nature's pulse here seems
to beat more quickly. In olden days the high places of the earth
associated themselves with myths of gods and Titans. Fully
representative of the world of to-day, Tennyson asks:

"Hast thou no voice, O Peak,
That standest high above all?"

And his answer turns on the mystic bonds that bind the deep
and the height into a cycle of interdependent activities.

"The deep has power on the height,
And the height has power on the deep.
A deep below the deep
And a height beyond the height!
Our hearing is not hearing,
And our seeing is not sight."

Or Morris gives the mysticism a more personal turn:

"Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!
I lift to you a hopeless eye,
I see your icy ramparts drawn
Between the sleepers and the dawn;
I see you when the sun has set
Flush with the dying daylight yet.
. . .
Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!
I shall not reach you till I die."

And now that modern geology is revealing to us more and more
of the origin and structure of the mountain ranges of the world,
and telling us more and more of the wondrous materials which
go to their building, the field for mysticism is being widely
extended.

Different, but hardly less powerful, is the influence of hill
scenery--whether they

"in the distance lie
Blue and yielding as the sky,"

or whether their gentle slopes are climbed and their delicate
beauties seen close at hand. As Ruskin has averred, even the
simplest rise can suggest the mountain; but it also has a mystic
charm of its own, complementary to that of the sheltered vale,
which is exquisite alike in its natural simplicity, and in its
response to the labours of man, where some

"kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God."

But though the influence of mountains, hills, ravines, and vales,
is obvious even to the superficial enquirer, it should not obscure
for us the very real, if less potent influence of lowlands, plains,
and deserts. More especially subtle in its effect upon the spirit
of man, is the loneliness of wildernesses, the prairies, the
pampas, the tundras, the Saharas. The Greek Pan