is a man gladdened when upon the escarpments of the Tuolumne he turns
back and looks westward over the plain towards the vast range.

The experience of such a sight is one peculiar in travel, or, for that
matter, if a man is lucky enough to enjoy it at home, insistent and
reiterated upon the mind of the home-dwelling man. Such a landscape, for
instance, makes a man praise God if his house is upon the height of
Mendip, and he can look over falling hills right over the Vale of Severn
toward the ridge above ridge of the Welsh solemnities beyond, until the
straight line and high of the Black Mountains ends his view.

It is the character of these landscapes to suggest at once a vastness,
diversity, and seclusion. When a man comes upon them unexpectedly he can
forget the perpetual toil of men and imagine that those who dwell below
in the near side before him are exempt from the necessities of this
world. When such a landscape is part of a man's dwelling-place, though
he well knows that the painful life of men within those hills is the
same hard business that it is throughout the world, yet his knowledge is
modified and comforted by the permanent glory of the thing he sees.

The distant and high range that bounds his view makes a sort of veiling,
cutting it off and guarding it from whatever may be beyond. The
succession of lower ranges suggests secluded valleys, and the reiterated
woods, distant and more distant, convey an impression of fertility more
powerful than that of corn in harvest upon the lowlands.

Sometimes it is a whole province that is thus grasped by the eye,
sometimes in the summer haze but a few miles; always this scenery
inspires the onlooker with a sense of completion and of repose, and at
the same time, I think, with worship and with awe.