f
fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark places of
dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop--one of those weeds
doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are so
uninviting--and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts
forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a
strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves
down and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the
splendour gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the
roof of rock, waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the water
of the mountain stream that dashes it with dew. The snow at evening,
glowing with a sunset flush, is not more rosy-pure than this cascade
of pendent blossoms. It loves to be alone--inaccessible ledges, chasms
where winds combat, or moist caverns overarched near thundering falls,
are the places that it seeks. I will not compare it to a spirit of the
mountains or to a proud lonely soul, for such comparisons desecrate
the simplicity of nature, and no simile can add a glory to the flower.
It seems to have a conscious life of its own, so large and glorious
it is, so sensitive to every breath of air, so nobly placed upon its
bending stem, so royal in its solitude. I first saw it years ago on
the Simplon, feathering the drizzling crags above Isella. Then we
found it near Baveno, in a crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines.
The other day we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and
then felt like murderers; it was so sad to hold in our hands the
triumph of those many patient months, the full expansive life of
the flower, the splendour visible from valleys and hillsides, the
defenceless creature which had done its best to make the gloomy places
of the Alps most beautiful.

After passing many weeks among the high Alps it is a pleasure to
descend into the plains. The sunset, and sunrise, and the stars of
Lombardy, its level horizons and vague misty distances, are a source
of absolute relief after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of
a mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever more imposing than
when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace
of Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers
and rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled
by clouds, the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a
celestial city--unapproachable, beyond the range