on of details, which influences
like these, acting on an enormous scale, must inevitably produce in all
mountain groups; because each individual part and promontory, being
compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to
descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their
prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole,
instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. It is true that
each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own
projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of
its lines will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those
of its neighbors, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and
spirit to the limits of the scene. This effort is farther aided by the
original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which though it
often may be violently interrupted, is never without evidence of
existence; for the very interruption itself forces the eye to feel that
there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy and similarity of
lines and fractures, which, however full of variety and change of
direction, never lose the appearance of symmetry of one kind or another.
But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that these great
sympathizing masses are not one mountain, but a thousand mountains; that
they are originally composed of a multitude of separate eminences, hewn
and chiselled indeed into associating form, but each retaining still its
marked points and features of character,--that each of these individual
members has, by the very process which assimilated it to the rest, been
divided and subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor
mountains; finally, that the whole complicated system is interrupted
forever and ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain
will--by the precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the
torrent, and the peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the storm.
Hence we see that the same imperative laws which require perfect
simplicity of mass, require infinite and termless complication of
detail,--that there will not be an inch nor a hairbreadth of the
gigantic heap which has not its touch of separate character, its own
peculiar curve, stealing out for an instant and then melting into the
common line; felt for a moment by the blue mist of the hollow beyond,
then lost when it crosses the enlightened slope,--that all this
m