For this publicity there is no cure, and no alleviation; but the
storms of which you will complain so bitterly while they endure,
chequer and by their contrast brighten the sameness of the fair-
weather scenes. When sun and storm contend together - when the thick
clouds are broken up and pierced by arrows of golden daylight - there
will be startling rearrangements and transfigurations of the mountain
summits. A sun-dazzling spire of alp hangs suspended in mid-sky
among awful glooms and blackness; or perhaps the edge of some great
mountain shoulder will be designed in living gold, and appear for the
duration of a glance bright like a constellation, and alone 'in the
unapparent.' You may think you know the figure of these hills; but
when they are thus revealed, they belong no longer to the things of
earth - meteors we should rather call them, appearances of sun and
air that endure but for a moment and return no more. Other
variations are more lasting, as when, for instance, heavy and wet
snow has fallen through some windless hours, and the thin, spiry,
mountain pine trees stand each stock-still and loaded with a shining
burthen.
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