Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P.
IV.—MOUNTAINS.
HE Alps are to many an inexhaustible source of joy and peace, of health, and even of life. We have gone to them jaded and worn, feeling, perhaps, without any external cause, anxious and out of spirits, and have returned full of health and strength and energy. Among the mountains, Nature herself seems freer and happier, brighter and purer than elsewhere. The rush of the rivers and the repose of the lakes, the pure snowfields and majestic glaciers, the fresh air, the mysterious summits of the mountains, the blue haze of the distance, the morning tints and the evening glow, the beauty of the sky and the grandeur of the storm, have all refreshed and delighted us time after time, and their memories can never fade away.
Even now, as I write, comes back to me a bright vision of some Swiss valley; blue sky above, glittering snow, bare grey rock, dark pines here and there, mixed with bright green larches, then patches of smooth Alp, interspersed with clumps of trees and dotted with brown châlets; then below them rock again, and wood, but this time with more deciduous trees, and then the valley itself, with emerald meadows, interspersed with alder copses threaded together by a silver stream; and I almost fancy I can hear the delicious murmur of the rushing water. The endless variety and yet the sense of repose and power, the dignity of age, the energy of youth, the play of colour, the beauty of form, the mystery of their origin—all combine to invest mountains with a solemn beauty.
Another great charm of mountain districts is the richness of colour. "Consider,[1] first, the difference produced in the whole tone of landscape colour by the introduction of purple, violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of the grass, which I will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in
- ↑ Ruskin.
