Page:The world's show, 1851, or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to "enjoy themselves", and to see the Great Exhibition (IA worldsshow1851or00mayh).pdf/18

 beauty is, that it does not belong to the utilities of life—feeling with them is merely the source of prejudice—and everything that refines or dignifies humanity, is by such men regarded as sentimentalism or rodomontade.

And yet, the man who could visit Buttermere without a sense of the sublimity and the beauty which encompass him on every side, must be indeed dead to the higher enjoyments of life. Here, the mountains heave like the billows of the land, telling of the storm that swept across the earth before man was on it. Here, deep in their huge bowl of hills, lie the grey-green waters of Crummock and of Buttermere, tinted with the hues of the sloping fells around them, as if the mountain dyes had trickled into their streams. Look which way you will, the view is blocked up by giant cliffs. Far at the end stands a mighty mound of rocks, umber with the shadows of the masses of cloud that seem to rest upon its jagged tops, while the haze of the distance hangs about it like a bloom. On the one side and in front of this rise the peaks of High Craig, High Stile, and Red Pike, far up into the air, breaking the clouds as they pass, and the white mists circling and wreathing round their warted tops, save where the blue sky peeps brightly between them and the sun behind streams between the peaks, gilding every craig. The rays go slanting down towards the lake, leaving the steep mountain sides bathed in a rich dark shadow—while the waters below, here dance in the light, sparkling and shimmering, like scales of a fish, and there, swept by the sudden gust, the spray of their tiny waves is borne along the surface in a powdery shower. Here the steep sloping sides are yellow-green with the stinted verdure, spotted red, like rust, with the withered fern, or tufted over with the dark green furze. High up, the bare, ash-grey rocks thrust themselves through the sides, like the bones of the meagre Earth. The brown slopes of the more barren craigs are scored and gashed across with black furrows, showing the course of dried up torrents; while in another place, the mountain stream comes leaping down from craig to craig, whitening the hill-side as with wreaths of snow, and telling of the "tarn" which lies silent and dark above it, deep buried in the bosom of the mountain. Beside this, climbs a Wood, feathering the mountain sides, and yet so lost in the immensity that every tree seems but a blade of fern. Then, as you turn round to gaze upon the hills behind you, and bend your head far back to catch the Moss's highest craigs, you see blocks and blocks of stone tumbled one over the other, in a disorder that fills and confounds the mind, with trees jutting from their fissures, and twisting their bare roots under the huge stones, like cords to lash them to their places; while the mountain sheep, red with ruddle, stands perched on some overhanging craig, nipping the scanty herbage. And here, as you look over the tops of Hassness Wood, you see the blue smoke of the unseen cottage curling lightly up into the air, and blending itself with the bloom of the distant mountains. Then, as you journey on, you hear the mountain streams, now trickling softly down the sides, now hoarsely rushing down a rocky bed,