68 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



employed. There is much comfort to be derived from visit- 

 ing such a scene as this, which robs departure from it of its 

 sadness. Just as many people find the planning and selection 

 of a holiday quite as enjoyable as the actual visit, so the 

 memories and reminiscences of it in after years are often 

 even more pleasurable than the days spent amidst fatigue and 

 rain in order to obtain its coveted rest and refreshment. And 

 of all holidays a sojourn amongst mountains is most grateful to 

 jaded bodies and worn-out energies. Not only is the air 

 fresher and more invigorating as it rushes through the defiles 

 between them, and bears down health and coolness from the 

 higher tracts above their peaks, but the eyes are greeted with 

 an ever-changing feast of colour floating over their shoulders, 

 while the sylvan scents of firwood and all the wild odours of 

 heather and sweet gale enchant with their copia narium. As 

 for the higher aspects of mountain scenery, its moral and 

 aesthetic teachings, the modern High Priest of Beauty has 

 dilated on them in eloquent words which every disciple loves 

 to recall, but dares not imitate. Suffice it to say that every 

 murmur from the dripping mountain-pines, and the resounding 

 airs round each Scotch Albunea's house, which delight the 

 wanderer's ears as his eye dwells with rapture on the butter- 

 wort's purple flower, or watches the white vapours curl above 

 the dark and distant caldron into which the torrent wildly leaps 

 in its headlong chase to level ground that sights and sounds 

 even more commonplace than these are amongst the hills trans- 

 muted into magical effects of calm and refreshment. Each 

 one's fardel of cares drops off; earth's vain ambitions and 

 money's false glitter fade away before the stern might of the 

 hills; the soul must needs rise higher wherever the eye is 

 turned ; every tinkling rivulet brings down a message of peace. 

 Of course to the botanist, the ornithologist, or the geologist, 

 mountain scenery, as I have striven to show, reveals new 

 worlds of interest. No one need wonder, therefore, that 



