PROLEGOMENON. 45 



and thought, the exhausted professional slave, the hag- 

 gard hunter of pleasure, can come, and in the depths of 

 original forests, in the presence of the loveliest and 

 grandest forms of Nature, and under the ecstasy and heal- 

 ing of her divine wings, again fall into the "charmed circle" 

 of life and health. In bountiful profusion the saving ele- 

 ments are here poured forth; and the victim of disease and 

 suffering, of care and pain, can drink healing and happi- 

 ness, soundness and strength, from exhaustless fountains, 

 and both body and soul be delivered from the tyranny of 

 the "gloomy powers which reign in tainted sepulchres" 

 and a sinful world. 



It is obvious, then, that some shape of Bill of Fare for this 

 same soul and body was necessary to be rendered, some 

 statement of the availables of the Mountain in all its 

 aspects of use, health, beauty, and teaching, or worship, 

 ecstasy, progress, and salvation. Thus, of course, there 

 would be demanded a recitation of " what Heaven had 

 done for that delicious land," what the Earth-spirit meant 

 when that patch of the "garment thou readest" was 

 woven, something of this "fragment of the broad crea- 

 tion," "this divine improvization," some song of its what, 

 its where, its wherefore. Clearly devolving, then, was some 

 account of the Mountain, of its science or Natural History, 

 of its final cause, or end for which created, or Supernatural 

 History. 



Commencing at the foundation must come the book 

 "Atlas," the great mountain, the great mountain-holder, 

 the great heaven-holder, he "whose brawny back supports 

 the starry skies, whose head with piny forests crowned." 

 Hence the " Geology of the Mountain" was necessary, as 

 the basis or substratum of its story, the skeleton, the great 

 primordial framework, of its wondrous hody. 



Naturally upon this would come the enveloping mineral 

 mass, earth-cloak, or integument of the same, that is, the 

 Soil. Then the circulating fluids would attract attention, 

 and the story of the Waters, mineral, thermal, and pure, 



