These noble fronts have never varied. The clouds float here over the same ridges on which the eyes of our childhood rested, and of the men of old time. The clank of monstrous engines has never yet dismayed the primeval stillness.
The skeleton of creation is visible here, and we see the beginnings of the world. This solid granite sparkled in the sun when “the evening and the morning were the first day,” and was as firm and solid to the centre when the world was “without form and void.” This whinstone rock has been hardened in some earthquake furnace long since then, and these flints are new, though they held fire before Prometheus suffered. This soft soil is the relics of the life and death of a thousand green years, and the fresh bloom that feeds on its decay will nourish succeeding blossoms.
The Western nations look here for the dawn, and the people of the East for sunset. Young children look up here from cottage doors at evening, and see the portals of Paradise opened, gazing through vistas brighter than imagination, unfolding far into the heart of heaven, and hold their breath, waiting for the passage of the archangels. This is a glorified soil. On these peaks hang the morning and the evening stars. The sun and the moon come here to do them honour; and they clothe themselves with gold and azure, and purple, deeper than the Tyrian, to receive their celestial guests.
High up here in this blessed solitude there is life, and liberty of heart, and sacred peace. No fenced-in space confines me here. I breathe in a domain as wide as the horizon, as high as the planets and the sun. The clouds are my fellow-wanderers here, and enjoy with me the liberal bosom of the air. Their ethereal hills and dales invite my fancy to a real heaven, where I gather all I love around me. Their shadows cover me as they pass over, and I bid them “God speed” as they carry cool showers down to the thirsting land. No miserable moan of want or sickness, no sob of long-breaking hearts, no choked sigh of cheated hope, nor any human woe, alarms me here. I see no loathsome household, plague-stricken with poverty, and festering in filth, despised of men, and famishing into horrors and crime: no form of woman (black shame before God!) wading in fœtid rags through mire and snow, with those awful human (!) children of hers, debased as the swine with whom they sleep (for charity!) and on whom the rich man looks—poor unreckoning fool!—and never pauses to think and tremble.
Here the wild bee sings among the rich fragrance of the heather-bells and thyme, gathering pure honey, fresh from the breath of the immediate sunrise. The larks have their nests among the heath by thousands, and make the whole mountain musical. Many strange insects, born and dying in the hour, that live on dew-drops, buzz by, and a thousand unknown creatures, gifted with voice, inhabiting small twigs in labyrinths of greenest moss, join in the hymn. The invisible wind, like a ruler of the strings, pours in a sovereign master-note that blends in all one solemn harmony, filling the air till the valleys sing for joy.
Here is Solitude, unforced, and free as the wandering wind. Here is peace like the summer life of untrodden blossoms. Here is a lofty quiet as of the dreams of the heart over its holy memories. Here are everlasting rocks, steadfast as honour, and true. Here is wealth for Fancy, and a dwelling for Imagination. Wide and far as the peaks can seek the heavens, there is no place for Envy or Hate, where the glens are vocal, and the holy silence compels the heart to adoration, making a haven for religion among the mighty hills.
What throes of central agony heaved up these huge mountains, twisting and folding each into each away as far as the eye can follow! What pangs and convulsions at the heart! What startling from chaotic trance, long before man or his mammoth ancestors, at the creative song of some wandering star-messenger, millions of years upon its way!
My heart enlarges here, and recognises an aërial amity with the sky. I am filled with celestial promptings. I shake off all incumbrance of the earth. I stretch out my arms to the blue heaven, and its breath comes into my bosom as a friend. The stir of humanity is dumb beneath me. I leap among the heathy knolls. I sing beside the infant rivers. I shout, and hear answers from the lurking echoes, like the mysterious voices of infinite years. I drink in unused air with
“Fair creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,