CHAPTER THE LAST. 407 



like ourselves. Hence the personifications which we find 

 in the talk of the mountaineer, — the vapours, the storm, 

 the torrents, the deep lake, are to him not inanimate 

 things : he has heard or looked on them with dread or 

 with complacent joy ; and he knows the ways of each, as 

 though it were a living creature which he himself had 

 reared. And this is the beginning of poetry. 



I have often asked the name of a peak, or field of snow, 

 only in the hope I might hear that it was some " Spitz," 

 or " Kopf," or " Firner." The positive pleasure such mere 

 names afford me is greater than I can say. "Wetter 

 Spitz," "Teufels Horn," "Uebergossener Alp," "Gems 

 Wand," "Sonnen Joch," " Steinernes Meer," — what 

 painting there is in these words ; what scenes they call 

 up, and how they invest the dead, senseless rock with a 

 living interest ! Yonder peak becomes, for me, more 

 than a mere mass of dumb stone, when I hear that there 

 the wild elements come together and hold their meetings, 

 and descend thence in storm and tempest upon the lower 

 world. Another, perhaps, has a dread story locked up in 

 its name, and as you hear it your fancy conjures up a 

 tale of terrible retribution, overtaking some great sin. 



The mists also, as seen on the mountains, are differ- 

 ent from anything of the sort ever witnessed in the plain : 

 they sometimes come clothed in loveliness, but they will 

 rise too dread and dimly, and with a fearful and unspa- 

 ring power. Here they assume great forms, and are a 

 reality, a presence. They rise up, and pass slowly by 

 you, like sad ghosts, or come rushing on along the sides 

 of the mountain, a long array of muffled shapes of super- 

 human bulk. It is an impressive, a very impressive sight j 

 and not only on account of their vast proportions as they 

 sweep through the air, but because of the change that is 

 wrought by them j for they separate you at once and en- 



