NAMES 
487 
towns and counties, or to any mark drawn by the hand of so- 
ciety upon the face of a country, would seem only right and 
proper ; but except in extraordinary cases growing out of some 
peculiar connection, another class of words appears much better 
fitted to the natural features of the land, its rivers, lakes, and 
hills. There is a grandeur, a sublimity, about a mountain espe- 
cially, which should ensure it, if possible, a poetical, or at least 
an imaginative name. Consider a mountain peak, stern and sav- 
age, veiled in mist and cloud, swept by the storm and the torrent, 
half-clad in the wild verdure of the evergreen forest, and say if 
it be not a miserable dearth of words and ideas, to call that grand 
pile by the name borne by some honorable gentleman just tiirning 
the corner, in “ honest broadcloth, close buttoned to the chin.” 
Indeed, if we except the man in the moon, whose face is made 
up of hills, and that stout Atlas of old, who bore the earth on 
his shoulder, no private individual would seem to make out a very 
clear claim to bestow his name upon a vast, rocky pile. Perhaps 
a certain Anthony, whose nose meets us so boldly in more than 
one place, might prove a third exception, provided one could 
clearly make out his identity. But generally it must be admitted 
that this connection between a mountain and a man, reminds one 
rather unpleasantly of that between the mountain and the mouse. 
Doubtless it is no easy task to name a whole country. Those 
gentlemen who devote themselves to making geographical dis- 
coveries, who penetrate into unknown deserts, and cross seas 
where pilots have never been before them, encounter so many 
hardships, and have so many labors to occupy their attention, that 
we cannot wonder if they are generally satisfied with giving the 
first tolerable name which occurs to them ; and it is perhaps only 
