208 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE chap. 



tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or 

 in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the 

 far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive." 



" I do not know," he says elsewhere, " any 

 district possessing a more pure or uninter- 

 rupted fulness of mountain character (and 

 that of the highest order), or which appears to 

 have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, 

 than that which borders the course of the 

 Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The 

 paths which lead to it, out of the valley of the 

 Rhone, rising at first in steep circles among 

 the walnut trees, like winding stairs among 

 the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the 

 shoulders of the hills into a valley almost 

 unknown, but thickly inhabited by an indus- 

 trious and patient population. Along the 

 ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers, 

 into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the 

 backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant 

 watches the slow colouring of the tufts of moss 

 and roots of herb, which, little by little, gather 

 a feeble soil over the iron substance ; then, 

 supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground 

 with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade, 



