CONSTRUCTION

V. THE WALL VEIL

57

CHAPTER V

THE WALL VEIL

§ I. The summer of the year 1849 was spent by thewriter in researches little bearing upon his present subject,and connected chiefly with proposed illustrations of themountain forms in the works of J. M. W. Turner. Butthere are sometimes more valuable lessons to be learnedin the school of nature than in that of Vitruvius , and afragment of building among the Alps is singularly illustra-tive of the chief feature which I have at present to developas necessary to the perfection of the wall veil.

It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls,one of them overhanging; crowned with a cornice, noddingsome hundred and fifty feet over its massive flank, threethousand above its glacier base, and fourteen thousandabove the sea,—a wall truly of some majesty, at once themost precipitous and the strongest mass in the whole chainof the Alps, the Mont Cervin ,

§ 2. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower.It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its westernroot with the Dent cl’Erin, and lifting itself like a rearinghorse with its face to the east. All the way along theflank of it, for half a day’s journey on the Zmutt glacier,the grim black terraces of its foundations range almostwithout a break; and the clouds, when their day’s workis done, and they are weary, lay themselves dovm on thosefoundation steps, and rest till dawm, each with his leaguesof grey mantle stretched along the grisly ledge, and thecornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight, threethousand feet above.

§ 3. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down,