LXXXVll ] 
LETTER LXXXVIT. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BJRRINGTOX. 
" — — — ■ Mngire videbis 
Sub pedibus terram, et desceiidere montibus ornos." 
(ViRG. .^n, lY. 490, 491.) 
" Earth bellows, 
Trees leave their mountains at her potent call ; 
Beneath her footsteps groans the trembling ball." 
(Pitt.) 
When I was a boy I used to read, witli astonishment and 
implicit assent, accounts in Baker's " Chronicle " of walking liills 
and travelling mountains. John Philips, in liis " Cyder," alludes 
to the credit given to such stories with a delicate but quaint 
vein of humour peculiar to the author of the " Splendid Shilling:" 
" I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice 
Of Marcley Hill ; the apple no where finds 
A kinder mould ; yet 'tis unsafe to trust 
Deceitful ground : who knows but that once mc re 
This mount may journey, and his present site 
Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 
For law debates ! " 
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that 
though our liills may never have journeyed far, yet that the 
ends of many of them have slipped and fallen away at distant 
periods, leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems to have 
been the case with N"ore and Whetham Hills ; and especially 
with the ridge between Harteley Park and Wardleliam, where 
the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrow\s ; and lies 
still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for 
