_Ossian_ fascinated some of the greatest men of the time. These Celtic poems, in the words of Matthew Arnold, passed 'like a flood of lava through Europe.' In the deliberate judgement of this acute critic, they revealed 'the very soul of the Celtic genius, and have the proud distinction of having brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact with the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it.'[44] There can at least be no doubt that they gave a new and powerful impulse to the appreciation of the wilder aspects of nature, and did much to prepare the way for that love of mountain-scenery which has been one of the characteristic developments of the nineteenth century. It is not that in Ossian Highland landscape was deliberately described, but it formed a continually visible and changing background. The prevalent character of the whole range of scenery in the region, and the general impression made by it on the eye and mind, were so vividly conveyed that no one familiar with the country can fail to recognise how faithfully the innermost soul of the West Highlands is rendered. Never before or since have the endless changes of sky and atmosphere been more powerfully portrayed. In the tempestuous climate of the west of Scotland these changes succeed each other with a rapidity and energy such as the dweller on the southern lowlands can hardly realise. They are faithfully, if somewhat monotonously, reflected in _Ossian_. All through the poems the air seems ever astir around us. Sometimes it is only a gently-breathing zephyr which 'Chases round and round The hoary beard of thistle old, Dark-moving over grassy mounds.'[45] We mark the graves of dead heroes by 'Their long grass waving in the wind,' and we move onwards 'in the robe of the misty glen' past 'Branches and brown tufts of grass Which tremble and whistle in the breeze.' But when the full Atlantic gale sweeps over the land, and the rain-clouds rush in swift procession across the half-hidden hills, the moaning and shrieking of the storm come like sounds from another world. We seem to hear the tread, and almost to see the forms, of the ghosts of the Ossianic heroes, 'Chasing spectre-boars of mist On wings of great winds on the cairn. When bursts the cloud in Cona of the glens, A thousand spirits wildly shriek On the waste wind that sweeps around the cairn.' Nor is the turmoil of the tempest on the sea less vividly depicted. We are shown the 'Waves surging onward in mist, When their crests are seen in foam Over smoke and haze widespread.' In the midst of the gloom we descry a shore-stack against which the ocean 'Dashes the force of billows cold; White spray is high around its throat, And cairns resound on the heathery steep.'