I look at the strange, old, cloudy mountains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around them—an indescribable aerial halo—which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the air,—that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering images? * * * * * [Sidenote: The mysterious in nature.] I like best these snow-pure glaciers seen through these black pines; there is something mysterious about them when you thus catch glimpses, and see not the earthly base on which they rest. I recollect the same fact in seeing the cataract of Niagara through trees, where merely the dizzying fall of water was visible, with its foam, and spray, and rainbow; it produced an idea of something supernatural.... Every prospect loses by being made definite. As long as we only see a thing by glimpses, and imagine that there is a deal more that we do _not_ see, the mind is kept in a constant excitement and play; but come to a point where you can fairly and squarely take in the whole, and there your mind falls listless. It is the greatest proof, to me, of the infinite nature of our minds, that we almost instantly undervalue what we have thoroughly attained.... I remember once, after finishing a very circumstantial treatise on the nature of heaven, being oppressed with a similar sensation of satiety,—that which hath not entered the heart of man to conceive must not be mapped out,—hence the wisdom of the dim, indefinite imagery of the Scriptures; they give you no hard outline, no definite limit; occasionally they part as do the clouds around these mountains, giving you flashes and gleams of something supernatural and splendid, but never fully unveiling. * * * * * [Sidenote: Cloud landscapes.] It is odd, though, to look at those cloud-caperings; quite as interesting, in its way, as to read new systems of transcendental philosophy, and perhaps quite as profitable. Yonder is a great white-headed cloud, slowly unrolling himself in the bosom of a black pine forest. Across the other side of the road a huge granite cliff has picked up a bit of gauzy silver, which he is winding around his scraggy neck. And now, here comes a cascade, right over our heads; a cascade, not of water, but of cloud; for the poor little brook that makes it faints away before it gets down to us; it falls like a shimmer of moonlight, or a shower of powdered silver, while a tremulous rainbow appears at uncertain intervals, like a half-seen spirit. * * * * * [Sidenote: A cascade.] The cascade here, as in mountains generally, is a never-failing source of life and variety. Water, joyous, buoyant son of Nature, is calling to you, leaping, sparkling, mocking at you between bushes, and singing as he goes down the dells. A thousand little pictures he makes among the rocks as he goes. * * * * * [Sidenote: Phases of nature.]