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The symmetry and proportion of hills 

 and mountains, are not marked out and 

 ascertained like those of the human figure; 

 but the general principles of beauty and 

 ugliness, of picturesqueness and deformity, 

 are easily to be traced in them, though not 

 in so striking and obvious a manner. 



Those hills and mountains which nearly 

 approach to angles, are often called beau- 

 tiful; seldom, I believe, ugly: and when 

 their size and colour are diminished and 

 softened by distance, they accord with the 

 softest and most pleasing scenes, and com- 

 pose the distance of some of Claude's most 

 polished landscapes. The ugliest forms of 

 hills, if my ideas be just, are those which 

 are lumpish, and, as it were, unformed ; 

 Such, for instance, as from one of the ugliest 

 and most shapeless animals are called pig- 

 backed. AVhen the summits of any of 

 these are notched into paltry divisions, 

 or have such insignificant risings upon 

 them as appear like knobs or bumps; 



continued flow of outline, even where beauty of form is the 

 only object. 



