sparkling with dewdrops
Indwelt with little angels of the Sun,[37]

lit and

warmed by golden sunshine
And fed by silver rain,

which now and again sprinkles the whole earth with diamonds.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] _The Spectator._

[23] Milton.

[24] Jefferies.

[25] Forbes, _A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_.

[26] Tennyson.

[27] Hamerton.

[28] Marvell.

[29] Ruskin.

[30] Thomson, _Voyage of the Challenger_.

[31] Thomson, _Voyage of the Challenger_.

[32] Sir J. Paget, _On the Pathology of Plants_.

[33] Evelyn's _Sylva_.

[34] _Modern Painters._

[35] M. Correvon informs me that the Gruyere cheese is supposed to owe
its peculiar flavour to the alpine Alchemilla, which is now on that
account often purposely sown elsewhere.

[36] J. R. Lowell.

[37] Hamerton.

CHAPTER VI

MOUNTAINS

Mountains "seem to have been built for the human race, as at
once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of
illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple
lessons for the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the
thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. They are
great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock,
pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow,
and vaults of purple traversed by the continual
stars."--RUSKIN.

[Illustration: SUMMIT OF MONT BLANC. _To face page 203._]

CHAPTER VI

MOUNTAINS

The Alps are to many of us an inexhaustible source of joy and peace, of
health, and even of life. We have gone to them jaded and worn, feeling,
perhaps without any external cause, anxious and out of spirits, and have
returned full of health, strength, and energy. Among the mountains
Nature herself seems freer and happier, brighter and purer, than
elsewhere. The rush of the rivers, and the repose of the lakes, the pure
snowfields and majestic glaciers, the fresh air, the mysterious summits
of the mountains, the blue haze of the distance, the morning tints and
the evening glow, the beauty of the sky and the grandeur of the storm,
have all refreshed and delighted us time after time, and their memories
can never fade away.

Even now as I write comes back to me the bright vision of an Alpine
valley--blue sky above, glittering snow, bare grey or rich red rock,
dark pines here and there, mixed with bright green larches, then patches
of smooth alp, with c