burning cities on the horizon, through the
tracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the
twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their
valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn
were washed with crimson at sunset.

And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of
evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on
men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would
perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend
about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me
earnestly.

The day will assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ a
grave question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arise
persons able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of the
world seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any
other considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of
timber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's
work, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited
and humble aim that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far
the idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves
and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them.

[22] _Genesis_ ii, 15; iii 24.

[23] "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but
of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a
Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists.
His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his
fondness for birds.

THE MOUNTAIN GLORY

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 20

I have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills
with the greater insistence that I feared my own excessive love for
them might lead me into too favourable interpretation of their
influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might
accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, I
desire to lead him concerning them. For, to myself, mountains are the
beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the
forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are
wholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at the
lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil
and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory,
or read