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such moments even the dullest soul shares with inar-ticulate emotion the feelings which poets have put intowords for all ages. Our pulses beat in tune with thegreat pulse of Life which is breathing round us. We loseourselves and become part of the vast order into thevisible presence of which we seem for a brief space tohave been translated. On a lesser height, whence sometown is seen like a great ant-heap with the black in-sects hurrying backwards and forwards across its lanes,the insignificance of the human race is often painfullyprominent. But here, removed by leagues of snow andice and a mile or two of sheer height from the restof our race, no such thought oppresses us. Man ismerged in nature, cities have become specks, provincesare spread out like fields, the eye ra.nges across a king-dom. Through the stillness which fills the upper airthe ear seems to catch from time to time some faintecho of
-The deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved airjEolian modulations.
On its lofty standpoint the mind feels in harmony withthe soul of the universe, and almost fancies itself togain a glimpse of its workings.
Seen from the valley the sublimity of the mountainprecipice may be due to a sentiment at root akin toterror. Grandeur is there shown in its most overpower-ing—a Frenchman might say brutal—form by somegiant peak towering defiantly skywards, ‘ remote, serene,and inaccessible,’ a chill colossus alien to human life.But on the pep,k we are conquerors ; its terrors are leftbelow and behind us. In our new scale of vision the