1828.] Meditations on Mountains. 583 



declining sun, streams come down, foaming and white, appearing like 

 threads of silver on the changing purple of the pigeon's neck ; and, in 

 the centre, there expands a lake, which here glistens like burnished gold 

 in the sunbeam, and there sleeps as a mirror in the shade, giving back, 

 clear and unbroken, all the varied tints of the mountain, and all the 

 glades and coppices on its shores. It lies so calm and so still, that you 

 would think a ripple had never passed over its surface. The mountain 

 is divided : one part appearing grey with rock, and spotted with snow, 

 over a mass of white and fleecy cloud ; and the other part, of richer and 

 more varied tints, coming out below the same, and terminating in the softer 

 scenery by the lake. Those coppices, planted by no human hand 

 those swells and forms of glade and lawn, which art cannot imitate and 

 the gay green of the whole, doubly gay from the contrast of the brown 

 heather that you have been crossing for the last three or four hours, give 

 charms to the place which you never found in a place before. And there 

 are cottages, too humble in size, but snug in situation. There are the 

 bleating of flocks upon the slope, the lowing of herds on the meadows, 

 where the winding rivulet the very one . whose fall you saw steals 

 quietly away from the lake ; and there are blue smokes curling through 

 the trees, and proclaiming to the shepherd, the herdsman, and the wood- 

 cutter, that, when the horn calls the sheep to the fold, and the man 

 from the hill, there will be the homely, but hearty evening meal; and 

 you will be welcome, thrice welcome, to the first and the finest share. 



This again you owe, at least the choicest part of all this, to the moun- 

 tain. The lake the lake is the charm ! It is the cause of all the green- 

 ness and fertility. In its fifty or hundred fathoms of depth, there is a 

 charm which all the frost of winter cannot bind, and which, with the 

 shelter of the mountain, makes it delightfully temperate when the air 

 over the plain below is covered with spiculce of ice. If the air be free of 

 moisture or, rather, of that which would be moisture if warm enough 

 cold is a matter of indifference ; but, if you must give the vital heat of 

 your body to thaw the air as you move along, you are chilled almost to 

 death. 



Now who ever saw a lake worthy the name, save in a mountainous 

 country ? On a plain it is a puddle, a fen, or a quagmire, according to 

 its age and size ; and mildew and ague are the blessings which it brings. 

 In winter, it is shallow, freezes easily, and is productive of cold; in sum- 

 mer, it is full of poisonous plants for every thing that grows in a marsh 

 or a puddle is noxious ; and the reptiles that it contains are hideous and 

 loathsome The water stagnates, the vegetables decay, the animals die; 

 all sorts of offensive things are blown into it; and the whole is boiled 

 and fermented in the summer heat, till the steam be ranker than imagi- 

 nation could picture the fumes of a witch's cauldron. 



The information and philosophy of Shakspeare were as accurate as his 

 power of poetical expression : indeed these are the soul of his poetry, 

 and but for them the body must have died long ago ; and where does 

 Shakspeare draw the deadliest of his plagues those which are impre- 

 cated by Caliban ? Why, from " lakes" in level countries. 



As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed 

 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen, 

 Drop on you both ! 



