_Mr. Forester._ To a certain extent I cannot but agree with you. The names of Hampden and Milton are associated with the level plains and flat pastures of Buckinghamshire; but I cannot now remember what names of true greatness and unshaken devotion to general liberty are associated with these heathy rocks and cloud-capped mountains of Cumberland. We have seen a little horde of poets, who brought hither from the vales of the south the harps which they had consecrated to Truth and Liberty, to acquire new energy in the mountain winds: and now those harps are attuned to the praise of luxurious power, to the strains of courtly sycophancy, and to the hymns of exploded superstition. But let not the innocent mountains bear the burden of their transgressions. _Mr. Fax._ All I mean to say is, that there is nothing in the nature of mountain scenery either to make men free or to keep them so. The only source of freedom is intellectual light. The ignorant are always slaves, though they dwell among the Andes. The wise are always free, though they cultivate a savannah. Who is so stupid and so servile as a Swiss, whom you find, like a piece of living furniture, the human latch of every great man’s door? _Mr. Forester._ Let us look back to former days, to the mountains of the North: Wild the Runic faith, And wild the realms where Scandinavian chiefs And Scalds arose, and hence the Scald’s strong verse Partook the savage wildness. And methinks, Amid such scenes as these the poet’s soul Might best attain full growth. _Mr. Fax._ As to the ‘Scald’s strong verse,’ I must say I have never seen any specimens of it that I did not think mere trash. It is little more than a rhapsody of rejoicing in carnage, a ringing of changes on the biting sword and the flowing of blood and the feast of the raven and the vulture, and fulsome flattery of the chieftain, of whom the said Scald was the abject slave, vassal, parasite, and laureate, interspersed with continual hints that he ought to be well paid for his lying panegyrics. _Mr. Forester._ There is some justice in your observations: nevertheless, I must still contend that those who seek the mountains in a proper frame of feeling will find in them images of energy and liberty, harmonising most aptly with the loftiness of an unprejudiced mind, and nerving the arm of resistance to every variety of oppression and imposture that winds the chains of power round the free-born spirit of man. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE FRACAS