"It is an uncharitable error to ascribe the delight with which unpoetical persons often speak of a mountain-tour, to affectation. The delight is as real as mutton and beef, with which it has a closer connexion than the travellers themselves suspect; arising, in great measure, from the good effects of mountain air, regular exercise, and wholesome diet, upon the spirits. This is sensual, indeed, though not improperly so; but it is no concession to the materialist. I do not deny that my neighbour has a soul, by referring a particular pleasure in him to the body." (P. 35.) So much for the unpoetic traveller with staff and knapsack, glorying, it may be, in his feats of pedestrianism. He is permitted, in spite of his grossness, to have a soul within his body. But the more poetic fraternity are not therefore to pass scatheless. "The noisiest streams are the shallowest. It is an old saying, but never out of season, least of all in an age the fit symbol of which would not be, like the Ephesian personification of nature, _multimamma_--for it neither brings forth nor nourishes--but _multilingua_. Your _amateur_ will talk by the ell, or, if you wish it, by the mile, about the inexpressible charms of nature; but I never heard that his love had caused him the slightest uneasiness. "It is only," continues the writer, in a style which becomes suddenly overclouded with a strange metaphysical obscurity,--"it is only by the perception of some contrast that we become conscious of our feelings. _The feelings, however, may exist for centuries, without the consciousness; and still, when they are mighty, they will overpower consciousness_; when they are deep, it will be unable to fathom them. Love has been called 'loquacious as a vernal bird,' and with truth; but his loquacity comes on him mostly in the absence of his beloved. Here too the same illustration holds: the deep stream is not heard until some obstacle opposes it. But can anybody, when floating down the Rhine, believe that the builders and dwellers in those castles, with which every rock is crested, were blind to all the beauties around them? Is it quite impossible that they should have felt almost as much as the sentimental tourist, who returns to his parlour in some metropolis, and puffs out the fumes of his admiration through his quill? Has the moon no existence independent of the halo about her? [_sic_] or does the halo even flow from her? Is it not produced by the dimness and density of the atmosphere through which she has to shine? Give me the love of the bird that broods over her own nest, rather than of one who lays her eggs in the nest of another, albeit she warble about parental affection as loudly as Rousseau or Lord Byron." (P. 50.)