Or take one of the noblest objects in nature--the mountain. There is no object except the sea and the sky that reflects to the sight colours so beautiful, and in such masses. But colour, and form, and magnitude, constitute but a part of the beauty or the sublimity of the mountain. Not only do the clouds encircle or rest upon it, but men have laid on it their grandest thoughts: we have associated with it our moral fortitude, and all we understand of greatness or elevation of mind; our phraseology seems half reflected from the mountain. Still more, we have made it holy ground. Has not God himself descended on the mountain? Are not the hills, once and for ever, "the unwalled temples of our earth?" And still there is another circumstance attendant upon mountain scenery, which adds a solemnity of its own, and is a condition of the enjoyment of other sources of the sublime--solitude. It seems to us that the feeling of solitude almost always associates itself with mountain scenery. Mrs Somerville, in the description which she gives or quotes, in her _Physical Geography_, of the Himalayas, says-- "The loftiest peaks being bare of snow gives great variety of colour and beauty to the scenery, which in these passes is at all times magnificent. During the day, the stupendous size of the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and the sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness of their distant outline melting into the pale blue sky, contrasted with the deep azure above, is described as a scene of wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity, and no language can describe the splendour of the sunbeams at daybreak, streaming between the high peaks, and throwing their gigantic shadows on the mountains below. There, far above the habitation of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard; the very echo of the traveller's footsteps startles him in the awful _solitude and silence_ that reigns in those august dwellings of everlasting snow." No one can fail to recognise the effect of the last circumstance mentioned. Let those mountains be the scene of a gathering of any human multitude, and they would be more desecrated than if their peaks had been levelled to the ground. We have also quoted this description to show how large a share _colour_ takes in beautifying such a scene. Colour, either in large fields of it, or in sharp contrasts, or in gradual shading--the play of light, in short, upon this world--is the first element of beauty.