bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of
the shaking grass, and all manner of hues of variable pleasant light out
of the sky. Nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain-bars in
the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you
will look deep enough, you may see the dark serious blue of far-off sky,
and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you see in
that despised stream either the refuse of the street, or the image of
the sky. So it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 71: From "Modern Painters," Vol. I, Pt. II, Sec. V, Chapter
I.]



C. THE MOUNTAIN GLORY[72]


The best image which the world can give of Paradise is in the slope of
the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a great Alp, with
its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this excellence not being in
any wise a matter referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but
demonstrable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colours on the
rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble incidents
in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any given moment.

For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of
landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep
ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland