inquiries into mediaeval landscape, is,
that they are precisely and accurately illustrative of the two principal
ideas of Dante about the Alps. I have already explained the rise of the
first drawing out of Turner's early study of the "Male Bolge" of the
Splugen and St. Gothard. The Goldau, on the other hand, might have been
drawn in purposeful illustration of the lines before referred to (Vol.
III. Ch. XV. Sec. 13) as descriptive of a "loco _Alpestro_." I give now
Dante's own words:

"Qual' e quella ruina, che nel fianco
Di qua da Trento l'Adice percosse,
O per tremuoto, o per sostegni manco,
Che da cima del monte, onde si mosse,
Al piano e si la roccia discoscesa
Che alcuna via darebbe a chi su fosse;
Cotal di quel burrato era la scesa."

"As is that landslip, ere you come to Trent,
That smote the flank of Adige, through some stay
Sinking beneath it, or by earthquake rent;
For from the summit, where of old it lay,
Plainwards the broken rock unto the feet
Of one above it might afford some way;
Such path adown this precipice we meet."

CAYLEY.

Sec. 26. Finally, there are two lessons to be gathered from the opposite
conditions of mountain decay, represented in these designs, of perhaps a
wider range of meaning than any which were suggested even by the states
of mountain strength. In the first, we find the unyielding rock,
undergoing no sudden danger, and capable of no total fall, yet, in its
hardness of heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves,
and stress of wandering storm. Its fragments, fruitless and restless,
are tossed into ever-changing heaps: no labor of man can subdue them to
his service, nor can his utmost patience secure any dwelling-place among
them. In this they are the type of all that humanity which, suffering
under no sudden punishment or sorrow, remains "stony ground," afflicted,
indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but only broken by them
into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. Of this ground not
"corn-giving,"--this "rough valley, neither eared nor sown,"[99] of the
common world, it is said, to those who have set up their idols in the
wreck of it--

"Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion. They, they
are thy lot."[100]

But, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by earthquake
and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succee