Foundations must be laid In Heaven; for, 'mid the wreck of _is_ and _was_, Things incomplete and purposes betrayed Make sadder transits o'er truth's mystic glass Than noblest objects utterly decayed.[41] [Footnote 41: Compare the sonnet _Malham Cove_, in "Poetical Works," vol. vi. p. 185.--ED.] _Bonn._--The great area of the vale here is a plain, covered with corn, vines, and fruit-trees: the impression is of richness, profusion, amplitude of space. The hills are probably higher than some of our own which we call mountains; but on the spot we named them hills. Such they appeared to our eyes; but when objects are all upon a large scale there is no means of comparing them accurately with others of their kind, which do not bear the same proportions to the objects with which they are surrounded. Those in the neighbourhood of Bonn are of themselves sufficiently interesting in shape and variety of surface: but what a dignity does the form of an ancient castle or tower confer upon a precipitous woody or craggy eminence! Well might this lordly river spare one or two of his castles,--which are too numerous for the most romantic fancy to hang its legends round each and all of them,--well might he spare, to our purer and more humble streams and lakes, one solitary ruin for the delight of our poets of the English mountains! To the right (but let him keep this to himself, it is too grand to be coveted by us) is the large ruined castle of Gottesberg, far-spreading on the summit of the hill--very light and elegant, with one massy tower....