n influence of Italian scenery, inducing a disposition to
such indolent or enthusiastic reverie, as could only express itself in
the visions of art; while the comparatively flat scenery and severer
climate of England and France, fostering less enthusiasm, and urging to
more exertion, brought about a practical and rational temperament,
progressive in policy, science, and literature, but wholly retrograde in
art; that is to say (for great art may be properly so defined), in the
Art of _Dreaming_.

3rd. Influence of mountains on literary power.

Sec. 25. III. In admitting this, we seem to involve the supposition that
mountain influence is either unfavorable or inessential to literary
power; but for this also the mountain influence is still necessary, only
in a subordinate degree. It is true, indeed, that the Avon is no
mountain torrent, and that the hills round the vale of Stratford are not
sublime; true, moreover, that the cantons Berne or Uri have never yet,
so far as I know, produced a great poet; but neither, on the other hand,
has Antwerp or Amsterdam. And, I believe, the natural scenery which will
be found, on the whole, productive of most literary intellect is that
mingled of hill and plain, as all available light is of flame and
darkness; the flame being the active element, and the darkness the
tempering one.

Sec. 26. In noting such evidence as bears upon this subject, the reader
must always remember that the mountains are at an unfair disadvantage,
in being much _out of the way_ of the masses of men employed in
intellectual pursuits. The position of a city is dictated by military
necessity or commercial convenience; it rises, flourishes, and absorbs
into its activity whatever leading intellect is in the surrounding
population. The persons who are able and desirous to give their children
education naturally resort to it; the best schools, the best society,
and the strongest motives assist and excite those born within its walls;
and youth after youth rises to distinction out of its streets, while
among the blue mountains, twenty miles away, the goatherds live and die
in unregarded lowliness. And yet this is no proof that the mountains
have little effect upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful
one. The men who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society
of the capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by the
absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected, ignora