brilliant without languor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy
rather than lull or overpower. Without advancing any untenable claim
to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps,
follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has
expressed in his _Guide to the Lakes_, a work which condenses the
results of many years of intimate observation.

"Our tracts of wood and water," he says, "are almost diminutive in
comparison (with Switzerland); therefore, as far as sublimity is
dependent upon absolute bulk and height, and atmospherical
influences in connexion with these, it is obvious that there can be
no rivalship. But a short residence among the British mountains will
furnish abundant proof, that, after a certain point of elevation, viz.,
that which allows of compact and fleecy clouds settling upon, or
sweeping over, the summits, the sense of sublimity depends more upon
form and relation of objects to each other than upon their actual
magnitude; and that an elevation of 3000 feet is sufficient to call
forth in a most impressive degree the creative, and magnifying, and
softening powers of the atmosphere."

And again, as to climate; "The rain," he says, "here comes down
heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear bright weather, when
every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and
torrents which are never muddy even in the heaviest floods. Days of
unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent; but the
showers, darkening or brightening as they fly from hill to hill, are
not less grateful to the eye than finely interwoven passages of gay
and sad music are touching to the ear. Vapours exhaling from the
lakes and meadows after sunrise in a hot season, or in moist weather
brooding upon the heights, or descending towards the valleys with