The disappointment is because every object is seen 



Mountain m fts high light, none in its shadowed portion ; 

 that the direct sunlight being over all is 

 reflected back to us from every surface ; that 

 the downward vision means a monotony of 

 light and a monotony of colour. 



The supreme charm of the mountain-lands 

 in June is their investiture with the loveliest 

 blue air that the year knows, and the entrance- 

 ment of summer cloud. Small feathery cirrus 

 or salmon - pink and snow - white cumulus 

 emerging behind the shoulder of a mountain 

 or drifting above the vast silent brows have an 

 infinite beauty. We should be cloud-climbers 

 rather than mere mountain - climbers ; we 

 should climb to see the heights recede in con- 

 tinual fold of loveliness, and the clouds lift 

 their trailing purple shadows and sail slowly or 

 hang motionless beyond the eternal buttresses. 

 And it is but an added poignancy to the sense 

 of infinite beauty to know that this word 

 'eternal' is, even for those ancient * change- 

 less ' hills, but the idlest hyperbole as though 

 one were to call the breaking wave everlasting, 

 or the blowing seed of the meadows as timeless 

 as the wind. There is not a vast and lonely 

 mountain that has not a fallen comrade among 

 the low undulating ridges of the continual low- 

 land ; not one of these that has not in turn to 



24 



