222 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers send their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulæ; and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,¹ the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges-ivy as light and

cf. Vol. IV. p. 172 n.). For Titian’s “St. Jerome,” see Vol. III. p. 180, Vol. IV. p. 247. The “little book” mentioned in line 20 of the extract is of course one of Ruskin’s sketch-books. With the general sentiment of § 1 contrast Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. iv. § 8 (Vol. IV. p. 71 and n.), and cf. as to the power of local associations, The Two Paths, § 12 (“Stand fast, Craig Ellachie”). See also Præterita, i. ch. ix. § 191, where Ruskin refers to the connection between admiration of natural beauty and human sympathy.]

¹ [Ruskin on his continental journeys must often have seen the processions of girls in white frocks with blue ribbons in honour of the Virgin with which every Catholic church, even in the poorest and most remote districts, celebrates the first of May. In later years he initiated a May Queen Festival at Whitelands Training College.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]