lume) he showed his knowledge of them, his
practice, in larger works, was always to treat the snowy mountains
merely as a far-away white cloud, concentrating the interest of his
picture on nearer and more tractable objects.

Sec. 19. One circumstance, however, bearing upon art, we may note before
leaving these upper precipices, namely, the way in which they illustrate
the favorite expression of Homer and Dante--_cut_ rocks. However little
satisfied we had reason to be with the degree of affection shown towards
mountain scenery by either poet, we may now perceive, with some respect
and surprise, that they had got at one character which was in the
essence of the noblest rocks, just as the early illuminators got at the
principles which lie at the heart of vegetation. As distinguished from
all other natural forms,--from fibres which are torn, crystals which are
broken, stones which are rounded or worn, animal and vegetable forms
which are grown or moulded,--the true hard rock or precipice is notably
a thing _cut_, its inner _grain_ or structure seeming to have less to do
with its form than is seen in any other object or substance whatsoever;
and the aspect of subjection to some external sculpturing instrument
being distinct in almost exact proportion to the size and stability of
the mass.

Sec. 20. It is not so, however, with the next groups of mountain which we
have to examine--those formed by the softer slaty coherents, when their
perishable and frail substance has been raised into cliffs in the manner
illustrated by Fig. 12 at p. 146,--cliffs whose front every frost
disorganizes into filmy shale, and of which every thunder-shower
dissolves tons in the swoln blackness of torrents. If this takes place
from the top downwards, the cliff is gradually effaced, and a more or
less rounded eminence is soon all that remains of it; but if the lower
beds only decompose, or if the whole structure is strengthened here and
there by courses of harder rock, the precipice is undermined, and
remains hanging in perilous ledges and projections until, the process
having reached the limit of its strength, vast portions of it fall at
once, leaving new fronts of equal ruggedness, to be ruined and cast down
in their turn.

The whole district of the northern inferior Alps, from the mountains of
the Reposoir to the Gemmi, is full of precipices of this kind; the well
known crests of the Mont Doron, and of the Aiguille de Varens, above
Sallenches,