for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The
various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks,
stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier
winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down
together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the
difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls,
gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in
grave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can be
conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland
forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added,
first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible
in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater
than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some
cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer
_visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive
height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of
masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them
continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against
white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused
in dimness of distance.

Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less
questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible
in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the
hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible
and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among
the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with
the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders
clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky;
and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early