h gathering storms.

Sec. 37. Sunset in tempest. Serene midnight.

Sec. 38. And sunrise on the Alps.

And indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even without such
laborious investigation as we have gone through, any person can go to
nature for a single day or hour, when she is really at work in any of
her nobler spheres of action, and yet retain respect for the old
masters; finding, as find he will, that every scene which rises, rests,
or departs before him, bears with it a thousand glories of which there
is not one shadow, one image, one trace or line, in any of their works;
but which will illustrate to him, at every new instant, some passage
which he had not before understood in the high works of modern art.
Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the
night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and
lake-like fields as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the
islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn,
colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight;
watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the
foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away; and down under
their depths, the glittering city and green pasture lie like Atlantis,
between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed
surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges
of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain. Has Claude
given this? Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered
mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the
winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with the
morning light,[42] upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose
leagues of massy undulation will melt back and back into that robe of
material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear
again above, in the serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible
dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in
the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below.[43] Has
Claude given this? Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those
mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses
along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every
instant higher and higher into the sky,[44] and casting l