My mind is on the mountain roaming,
My spirit's voice is still.

"The crags are lone on Coniston
And Glaramara's dell;
And dreary on the mighty one,
The cloud-enwreathed Sea-fell...."

"There is a thrill of strange delight
That passes quivering o'er me,
When blue hills rise upon the sight,
Like summer clouds before me."

Judge, then, of the delight with which he turned over the pages of a new
book, given him this birthday by the kind Mr. Telford, in whose carriage
he had first seen those blue hills--a book in which all his mountain
ideals, and more, were caught and kept enshrined--visions still, and of
mightier peaks and ampler valleys, romantically "tost" and sublimely
"lost," as he had so often written in his favourite rhymes. In the
vignettes to Rogers' "Italy," Turner had touched the chord for which
John Ruskin had been feeling all these years. No wonder that he took
Turner for his leader and master, and fondly tried to copy the wonderful
"Alps at Daybreak" to begin with, and then to imitate this new-found
magic art with his own subjects and finally to come boldly before the
world in passionate defence of a man who had done such great things for
him.

This mountain-worship was not inherited from his father, who never was
enthusiastic about peaks and clouds and glaciers, though he was
interested in all travelling in a general way. So that it was not