74 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



reindeer. We can fill up the valley with the stately 

 glacier which once stretched along its hollow and went 

 out to sea. We can dimly conceive the passage of 

 the long ages of persistent decay by which mountain 

 and glen, corry and cliff were carved into the forms 

 which now so delight our eye. 



In a memorable and often-quoted passage, Johnson 

 wrote, ' To abstract the mind from all local emotion 

 would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and 

 would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever with- 

 draws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes 

 the past, the distant, or the future predominate over 

 the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking 

 beings/ l If this be a just judgment, surely we may 

 further maintain that whatever heightens our interest 

 in the landscapes around us, whatever quickens the 

 imagination by presenting new views of what has long 

 been familiar, whatever deepens our reverence by teach- 

 ing us to recognise the proofs of that long orderly 

 progress through which the land has been fashioned 

 for our use, undoubtedly raises us in the dignity of 

 thinking beings, stimulates the emotional side of our 

 nature, and furnishes abundant material for the exercise 

 of the literary and artistic faculties. Science even in 

 her noblest inspirations, is never poetry, but she offers 

 thoughts of man and nature which the poet, in the 

 alembic of his genius, may transmute into purest poetic 

 gold. 



But we have lingered by the side of this northern 

 lake, with its noble curtain of mountains, and the sun 

 meanwhile has sunk in a glory of flame beneath the 



1 Tour in the Hebrides, p. 346. 



