' Had he got among the Alps on
a bright day he might have lost his reason. And even to any one who
has looked at landscape with any care, and in any way through the
spectacles of representative art, the scene has a character of
insanity. The distant shining mountain peak is here beside your eye;
the neighbouring dull-coloured house in comparison is miles away; the
summit, which is all of splendid snow, is close at hand; the nigh
slopes, which are black with pine trees, bear it no relation, and
might be in another sphere. Here there are none of those delicate
gradations, those intimate, misty joinings-on and spreadings-out into
the distance, nothing of that art of air and light by which the face
of nature explains and veils itself in climes which we may be allowed
to think more lovely. A glaring piece of crudity, where everything
that is not white is a solecism and defies the judgment of the
eyesight; a scene of blinding definition; a parade of daylight,
almost scenically vulgar, more than scenically trying, and yet hearty
and healthy, making the nerves to tighten and the mouth to smile:
such is the winter daytime in the Alps.
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