Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece | Page 5

presence not
formed into distinct belief' lies at the root of our profound veneration
for the nobler aspects of mountain scenery. This instinctive sense has
been very variously expressed by Goethe in Faust's celebrated
confession of faith, by Shelley in the stanzas of 'Adonais,' which begin
'He is made one with nature,' by Wordsworth in the lines on Tintern

Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel in his noble poems of Pantheism.
It is more or less strongly felt by all who have recognised the
indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a sure process of
change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present
dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of transition are of
necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety, vague, variable, and
unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the fermentation of the change
is felt, who have abandoned their old moorings, and have not yet
reached the haven for which they are steering, cannot but be indistinct
and undecided in their faith. The universe of which they form a part
becomes important to them in its infinite immensity. The principles of
beauty, goodness, order and law, no longer connected in their minds
with definite articles of faith, find symbols in the outer world. They are
glad to fly at certain moments from mankind and its oppressive
problems, for which religion no longer provides a satisfactory solution,
to Nature, where they vaguely localise the spirit that broods over us
controlling all our being. To such men Goethe's hymn is a form of faith,
and born of such a mood are the following far humbler verses:--
At Mürren let the morning lead thee out To walk upon the cold and
cloven hills, To hear the congregated mountains shout Their pæan of a
thousand foaming rills. Raimented with intolerable light The
snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row Arising, each a seraph in his
might; An organ each of varied stop doth blow. Heaven's azure dome
trembles through all her spheres, Feeling that music vibrate; and the
sun Raises his tenor as he upward steers, And all the glory-coated mists
that run Below him in the valley, hear his voice, And cry unto the dewy
fields, Rejoice!
There is a profound sympathy between music and fine scenery: they
both affect us in the same way, stirring strong but undefined emotions,
which express themselves in 'idle tears,' or evoking thoughts 'which lie,'
as Wordsworth says, 'too deep for tears,' beyond the reach of any words.
How little we know what multitudes of mingling reminiscences, held in
solution by the mind, and colouring its fancy with the iridescence of
variable hues, go to make up the sentiments which music or which
mountains stir! It is the very vagueness, changefulness, and dreamlike

indistinctness of these feelings which cause their charm; they
harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and seem to make our very
doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious that unrestrained
indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy
habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more apt
to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas to definite perfection.
If hours of thoughtfulness and seclusion are necessary to the
development of a true love for the Alps, it is no less essential to a right
understanding of their beauty that we should pass some wet and
gloomy days among the mountains. The unclouded sunsets and sunrises
which often follow one another in September in the Alps, have
something terrible. They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress
the mind with a sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a season
in one of the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in a little
châlet. Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams glittering
on the Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the snow-fields blazed
beneath a steady fire; evening after evening they shone like beacons in
the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they lost the glow;
the soul passed from them, and they stood pale yet weirdly garish
against the darkened sky. The stars came out, the moon shone, but not a
cloud sailed over the untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for
several weeks there was no change, till I was seized with an
overpowering horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley for a time; and
when I returned to it in wind and rain, I found that the partial veiling of
the mountain heights restored the charm which I had lost and made me
feel once more at home. The landscape takes a graver tone beneath the
mist that hides the higher peaks, and comes drifting, creeping, feeling,
through the pines upon their slopes--white, silent, blinding
vapour-wreaths around