]828.] Meditations on Mountains. 57? 



that the cannon roars and the sword smites : for this, all the pain and 

 labour of civilized man is undertaken, and all the formalities and restraints 

 of the social compact are borne. 



If, then, there were nothing about the mountain but its mere eleva- 

 tion, and if we had no power of doing any thing but gazing, there would 

 be something in it quite enough to attract both the eye and the admira- 

 tion ; but that is so small a part of the subject, that it is lost in the multi- 

 tude and the magnificence of the other parts. Mountains are, in the 

 economy of the world, the grand ministers of life ; they are the caskets 

 of its gems ; and they are the grand monuments of the revolutions of 

 nations, and of the mighty changes of the earth itself, by which it has 

 passed from the earliest crystal that enters into the composition of the 

 primitive granite, to that wonderful combination of powers, which, in 

 Newton, stretched the measuring line over the heavens and flung the 

 sun and the planets into the scale, and, in the mechanicho-chemists, 

 taught man to stand by and enjoy his pleasure, while the elements are 

 performing his work. To those too (if there be any such) who cannot 

 enjoy and appreciate these, the mere aspect of these giants of the earth 

 has something captivating about it ; and we invariably find that the most 

 merely mechanical man alive has a story to tell, when he comes from the 

 mountains, which stirs even his mood ten times more than the whole his- 

 tory of the richest and best cultivated plain. 



Even on the calm and tranquil day, when you go forth from the white- 

 washed house, that lies so snugly among its trees, at the top of the lawn 

 sloping southward to the river, and protected from the angry north, first 

 by the brown hill, and then by the blue mountain, spotted at the top with 

 patches of snow that defy the power of the summer sun ; you turn 

 instinctively to the mountain, and thread your way by the rugged path 

 in some ravine. At first you are charmed with the exquisite freshness 

 of the vegetation. Those little glades, softer than any texture of the loom, 

 and of brighter and more transparent green than any emerald that ever 

 was polished ; with those stately oaks and beeches around, upon which 

 never an axe or a pruning-hook perpetrated deformity j upon them no 

 angry wind has lighted ; they have not felt the blight and the te insect 

 breeze" of inconstant April ; not a bud has been blasted not a leaf 

 withered; all is living, and luxuriant, and perfect. Then the little 

 stream, now dancing over the ledge of rock, now turning round the 

 great stone which the winter flood has dashed down from the summit, 

 and anon expanding and luxuriating in the little pool, as transparent as 

 air, and all unruffled, save by the arrowy line formed by the trout, as he 

 darts from your side to the opposite one. It is well that fishing is best in 

 troubled waters ; for, while you stand on the margin of one of these little 

 pools, and observe the exquisite symmetry of his form, the beauty of his 

 spots, and the gracefulness and rapidity of his motions, you would rather 

 fast for the day than cheat him to his destruction under the hypocritical 

 pretence of giving him a dinner. 



Then, as you climb upward, the hoary points of rock begin to jut 

 out. Here they are hung with creeping plants, and gay with saxifrages ; 

 and there they stand, beetling and naked. In one place, the masses of 

 red sandstone are firm and regular, as if they formed part of the walls of 

 some ancient castle ; and there, the schistus lies in confused and curled 

 plates, as if old Chaos had been the sole architect. At one place, a mass 

 of claystone, eaten away by the frost, shews the sides bored into caves ; 



M.M. New Sm^.VoL. V. No. 30. 4 E 



