ced by all the influences at the command of Time. This character of former action adds inconceivably to the grandeur of the mountains, connecting them as it does with the mystery of the past; upon a plain we are more apt to see the present only, the mental vision seems confined to the level uniformity about it, we need some ancient work of man, some dim old history, to lead the mind backward; and this is one reason why a monument always strikes us more forcibly upon a plain, or on level ground; in such a position it fills the mind more with itself and its own associations. But without a history, without a monument, there is that upon the face of the mountains which, from the earliest ages, has led man to hail them as the “everlasting hills.”
In ancient times, this expression of individual action in the mountains was acknowledged by seer and poet. The fabled wars of the Titans, with the uptorn hills they hurled in their strife with the gods, may probably be traced back to this source, and similar fables in the form given them, by Scandinavian Sagas, are but a repetition of the same idea. We who have the most Holy Bible in our hands, may reverently read there also imagery of the like character. We are told by those familiar with the ancient tongues of the East, that in the early ages of the world the great mountains were all called the “mountains of the Lord.” The expression occurs repeatedly in the Pentateuch. But after the supernatural terrors which accompanied the proclamation of the Law in the wilderness, the same idea of mountains paying especial homage to the power of the Creator, seems to have become blended among the Hebrews with recollections of the quaking of Sinai. In the 68th Psalm, written by King David, when the ark
