Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched
along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains,---their lower
cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating
vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight,
which ran in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and
pierced in long, level rays, through their fringes of spear-like Pine.
Far above, shot up splintered masses of castellated rock,
jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there
a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked
lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the
morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept in the blue sky, the
utmost peaks of the eternal snow.
If we ask how this loftiness is attained, the reply must be, first,
that the subject is lofty and deserving of lofty description.
Indeed, the description never has a right to be loftier than the
subject. Then, examining this passage in detail, we find that the words
are all dignified, and in their very sound they are lofty, as for
instance "massy," "myriads," "castellated," "angular crags.
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