ple; virtue being
with him for the most part founded simply on the affections joined with
inherent purity in his women or on mere manly pride and honor in his
men;[116]--in a word, whatever difference, involving inferiority, there
exists between him and Dante, in his conceptions of the relation between
this world and the next, we may partly trace as we did the difference
between Bacon and Pascal, to the less noble character of the scenes
around him in his youth; and admit that, though it was necessary for his
special work that he should be put, as it were, on a level with his
race, on those plains of Stratford, we should see in this a proof,
instead of a negation, of the mountain power over human intellect. For
breadth and perfectness of condescending sight, the Shakesperian mind
stands alone; but in _ascending_ sight it is limited. The breadth of
grasp is innate; the stoop and slightness of it was given by the
circumstances of scene; and the difference between those careless
masques of heathen gods, or unbelieved though mightily conceived visions
of fairy, witch, or risen spirit, and the earnest faith of Dante's
vision of Paradise, is the true measure of the difference in influence
between the willowy banks of Avon, and the purple hills of Arno.

Sec. 39. Our third inquiry, into the influence of mountains on domestic and
military character, was, we said, to be deferred; for this reason, that
it is too much involved with the consideration of the influence of
simple rural life in unmountainous districts, to be entered upon with
advantage until we have examined the general beauty of vegetation,
whether lowland or mountainous. I hope to pursue this inquiry,
therefore, at the close of the next volume; only desiring, in the
meantime, to bring one or two points connected with it under the
consideration of our English travellers.

Sec. 40. For, it will be remembered, we first entered on this subject in
order to obtain some data as to the possibility of a Practical Ideal in
Swiss life, correspondent, in some measure, to the poetical ideal of the
same, which so largely entertains the European public. Of which
possibility, I do not think, after what we have even already seen of the
true effect of mountains on the human mind, there is any reason to
doubt, even if that ideal had not been presented to us already in some
measure, in the older life of the Swiss republics. But of its
possibility, _under present circumstances_, there i