ffect by the rocks above it being painted pink
to match; but I do not think that they are a kind of thing which the
clumsiness and false taste of nature can be supposed frequently to
produce; even granting that these same sweeps of the brush could, by any
exercise of the imagination, be conceived representative of a dark, or
any other side, which is far more than I am inclined to grant; seeing
that there is no east shadow, no appearance of reflected light, of
substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in short, but pure,
staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white ground. Nor is there a
touch in the picture more expressive. All are the mere dragging of the
brush here and there and everywhere, without meaning or intention;
winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything in fact which may serve to
break up the light and destroy its breadth, without bestowing in return
one hint or shadow of anything like form. This picture is, indeed, an
extraordinary case, but the Salvator above mentioned is a characteristic
and exceedingly favorable example of the usual mode of mountain drawing
among the old landscape painters.[56] Their admirers may be challenged
to bring forward a single instance of their expressing, or even
appearing to have noted, the great laws of structure above explained.
Their hills are, without exception, irregular earthy heaps, without
energy or direction of any kind, marked with shapeless shadows and
meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed, where great sublimity has been
aimed at, approximating to the pure and exalted ideal of rocks, which,
in the most artistical specimens of China cups and plates, we see
suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced upon peacocks' tails, but
never warranting even the wildest theorist in the conjecture that their
perpetrators had ever seen a mountain in their lives. Let us, however,
look farther into the modifications of character by which nature
conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although all mountains
are organized as we have seen, their organization is always modified,
and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon them by external
influence.

Sec. 10. Effects of external influence on mountain form.

We ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed another
great law, which must, however, be understood with greater latitude of
application than any of the others, as very far from imperative or
constant in particular cases, though univer