Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked

Upon the peopled desert past

As on a place of agony and strife,

mountains gave him a sense of freedom.

He praised the Rhine:

Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,

Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,

Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.

and far more the Alps:

Above me are the Alps,