of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream
and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the
continual stars,--of these, as we have seen, it was written, nor long
ago, by one of the best of the poor human race for whom they were built,
wondering in himself for whom their Creator _could_ have made them, and
thinking to have entirely discerned the Divine intent in them--"They are
inhabited by the Beasts."

Sec. 10. Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? Had mankind
offered no worship in their mountain churches? Was all that granite
sculpture and floral painting done by the angels in vain?

Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the
hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been accomplished in such
measure as, through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits them to be
accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language held concerning
them, or from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had
serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, be
difficult to show that their occult influence has been both constant and
essential to the progress of the race.

Sec. 11. Consider, first, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to
their mountain scenery some share in giving the Greeks and Italians
their intellectual lead among the nations of Europe.

There is not a single spot of land in either of these countries from
which mountains are not discernible; almost always they form the
principal feature of the scenery. The mountain outlines seen from
Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate
beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of
the Greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo
under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a
testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the
best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills.
Nor would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of
those nations, however little definite regard he might manifest for the
landscape of his country, had been mentally formed and disciplined by
it, so that even such enjoyment as Homer's of the ploughed ground and
poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy to the excitement of the
imagination produced, without his own consciousness, by other and
grander features of the scenery to which he had been accustomed fro