Vapours exhaling from the
lakes and meadows after sunrise in a hot season, or in moist weather
brooding upon the heights, or descending towards the valleys with
inaudible motion, give a visionary character to everything around
them; and are in themselves so beautiful as to dispose us to enter
into the feelings of those simple nations (such as the Laplanders of
this day) by whom they are taken for guardian deities of the
mountains; or to sympathize with others who have fancied these
delicate apparitions to be the spirits of their departed ancestors.
Akin to these are fleecy clouds resting upon the hill-tops; they are
not easily managed in picture, with their accompaniments of blue sky,
but how glorious are they in nature! How pregnant with imagination
for the poet! And the height of the Cumbrian mountains is sufficient
to exhibit daily and hourly instances of those mysterious attachments.
Such clouds, cleaving to their stations, or lifting up suddenly
their glittering heads from behind rocky barriers, or hurrying out
of sight with speed of the sharpest edge, will often tempt an
inhabitant to congratulate himself on belonging to a country of mists
and clouds and storms, and make him think of the blank sky of Egypt,
and of the cerulean vacancy of Italy, as an unanimated and even a
sad spectacle.
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