nding alone, far from sight of human face
or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to
receive the incense of the world.

Multifold mists join hands with the light to play fantastic tricks upon
these mighty monarchs. The closing day is tender, bringing sacrifice
and oblation; but the day of flitting clouds and frequent showers riots
in changing joys. Every subordinate eminence that has arrogated to
itself the sublimity of the distant mountain, against whose rocky sides
it lay lost, is unmasked by the vapors that gather behind it and reveal
its low-lying outlines. Every little dimple of the hills has its
chalice of mountain wine. The mist stretches above the ridge, a long,
low, level causeway, solid as the mountains themselves, which buttress
its farther side, a via triumpha, meet highway for the returning
chariot of an emperor. It rears itself from the valleys, a dragon
rampant and with horrid jaws. It flings itself with smothering
caresses about the burly mountains, and stifles them in its close
embrace. It trails along the hills, floating in filmy, parting gauze,
scattering little flecks of pearl, fringing itself over the hollows,
and hustling against a rocky breastwork that bars its onward going. It
wreathes upward, curling around the peaks and veiling summits, whose
slopes shine white in the unclouded sun. It shuts down gray, dense,
sombre, with moody monotone. It opens roguishly one little loop-hole,
through which--cloud above, cloud below, cloud on this side and on
that--you see a sweet, violet-hued mountain-dome, lying against a
background of brilliant blue sky,--just for one heart-beat, and it
closes again, gray, sheeted, monotonous.

Leaving the valley, and driving along the Jefferson road, you have the
mountains under an entirely new aspect. Before, they stood, as it
were, endwise. Now you have them at broadside. Mile after mile you
pass under their solid ramparts, but far enough to receive the idea of
their height and breadth, their vast material greatness,--far enough to
let the broad green levels of the intervale slide between, with here
and there a graceful elm, towering and protective, and here and there a
brown farm-house. But man's works show puny and mean beside nature,
which seems spontaneous as a thought. Man's work is a toil; nature's
is a relief. Man labors to attain abundance; nature, to throw off
superabundance. The mountain-sides bristle with forests; man d