own into
transverse ridges, which take, in perspective, a more or less peaked
outline, so, in their dilapidation, they split into narrow flakes,
which, if seen edgeways, look as sharp as a lance-point, but are
nevertheless still strong; being each of them, in reality, not a
lance-point or needle, but a hatchet edge.

Sec. 15. And since if these sharp flakes broke _straight_ across the masses
of mountain, when once the fissure took place, all hold would be lost
between flake and flake, it is ordered (and herein is the most notable
thing in the whole matter) that they shall not break straight, but _in
curves, round the body_ of the aiguilles, somewhat in the manner of the
coats of an onion; so that, even after fissure has taken place, the
detached film or flake clings to and leans upon the central mass, and
will not fall from it till centuries of piercing frost have wedged it
utterly from its hold; and, even then, will not fall all at once, but
drop to pieces slowly, and flake by flake. Consider a little the
beneficence of this ordinance;[62] supposing the cliffs had been built
like the castle wall, the mouldering away of a few bricks, more or less,
at the bottom would have brought down huge masses above, as it
constantly does in ruins, and in the mouldering cliffs of the slaty
coherents; while yet the top of the mountain would have been always
blunt and rounded, as at _a_, Fig. 36, when seen against the sky. But
the aiguille being built in these nearly vertical curved flakes, the
worst that the frost can do to it is to push its undermost rocks asunder
into forms such as at _b_, of which, when many of the edges have fallen,
the lower ones are more or less supported by the very debris accumulated
at their feet; and yet all the while the tops sustain themselves in the
most fantastic and incredible fineness of peak against the sky.

[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J. C. Armytage.
31. The Aiguille Blaitiere.]

[Illustration: FIG. 36.]

Sec. 16. I have drawn the flakes in Fig. 36, for illustration's sake, under
a caricatured form. Their real aspect will be understood in a moment by
a glance at the opposite plate, +31+, which represents the central
aiguille in the woodcut outline Fig. 35 (Aiguille Blaitiere, called by
Forbes Greppond), as seen from within about half a mile of its actual
base. The white shell-like mass beneath it is a small glacier, which in
its beautifully curved outline[63] appears to sympathiz