; the narrow ravines, carpeted with greensward, and
haunted by traditions of fairy or gnome; the jutting crags, crowned by
the castle or watch-tower; the white sea-cliff and sheep-fed down; the
long succession of coteau, sunburnt, and bristling with vines,--all
these owe whatever they have of simple beauty to the peculiar nature of
the group of rocks of which we are speaking; a group which, though
occasionally found in mountain masses of magnificent form and size, is
on the whole characterized by a comparative smallness of scale, and a
tendency to display itself less in true mountains than in elevated downs
or plains, through which winding valleys, more or less deep, are cut by
the action of the streams.

Sec. 4. It has been said that this group of rocks is distinguished by its
incapability of being separated into sheets. This is only true of it in
small portions, for it is usually deposited in beds or layers of
irregular thickness, which are easily separable from each other; and
when, as not unfrequently happens, some of these beds are only half an
inch or a quarter of an inch thick, the rock appears to break into flat
plates like a slaty coherent. But this appearance is deceptive. However
thin the bed may be, it will be found that it is in its own substance
compact, and not separable into two other beds; but the true slaty
coherents possess a delicate slatiness of structure, carried into their
most minute portions, so that however thin a piece of them may be, it is
usually possible, if we have instruments fine enough, to separate it
into two still thinner flakes. As, however, the slaty and compact
crystallines, so also the slaty and compact coherents pass into each
other by subtle gradations, and present many intermediate conditions,
very obscure and indefinable.

Sec. 5. I said just now that the colors of the compact coherents were
usually such as would pleasantly distinguish buildings from vegetation.
They are so; but considered as abstract hues, are yet far less agreeable
than those of the nobler and older rocks. And it is to be noticed, that
as these inferior rocks are the materials with which we usually build,
they form the ground of the idea suggested to most men's minds by the
word "stone," and therefore the general term "stone-color" is used in
common parlance as expressive of the hue to which the compact coherents
for the most part approximate. By stone-color I suppose we all
understand a sort of tawny grey,