undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the mountains in all
these things to the lowland is, I repeat, as measurable as the richness
of a painted window matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum
compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem to have been
built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals; full
of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple
lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious
in holiness for the worshipper.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 72: From "Modern Painters," Vol. IV, 1856, Chapter XX.]




D. SPLENDOURS OF SUNSET[73]


We have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and necessary in
nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colours, and we
repeat again that no gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these.
But it is a widely different thing when Nature herself takes a colouring
fit, and does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her
power. She has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but
incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of colour are
in these sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment
before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when
this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of
inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour, which would in