On this fact Mr Ruskin has this characteristic reflection, that Shakespeare having been ordained to take a full view of total human nature, to be perfectly equal and universal in his portraiture of man, could be allowed no mountains, nor even supreme natural beauty. For had he been reared among mountains they would have overbalanced him, have laid too powerful a grasp on his imagination, have made him lean too much their way, and so would have marred his universality. Whether we take this view of it or not, it is certain that the power of the mountains is not expressed in that poetry which expresses almost every other conceivable thing, and that the mountain rapture had to lie dumb for two more centuries before it found utterance in English song. In “Cymbeline” the two noble youths are brought up in caves among the mountains, but from this their characters receive no touch of freedom or grandeur, but are enhanced only by having taken no taint of degradation from so base a dwelling-place. “The only thing belonging to the hills,” says Mr. Ruskin, “that Shakespeare seems to feel as noble, was the pine-tree, and that was because he had seen in Warwickshire clumps of pine occasionally rising on little sandstone mounds above the lowland woods.” He touches on this tree fondly again and again. “As rough Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind, That by his top doth take the mountain pine, And make him stoop to the vale.” Again:— “You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wave their high tops, and to make no noise When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven.” And again:— “But when from under this terrestrial bank He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.” He knew little then of the mountains by experience; but had he known them more, though they might have added some sternness to his genius, some awe to his thoughts about life, they might perhaps have narrowed his range and made his view of men less universal and serene. So Mr. Ruskin thinks. And yet perhaps it is hardly safe so to speculate about Shakespeare. For could not the mind which took in and harmonized so many things, have made room for this other influence, without deranging its proportions and marring its universality? Though Shakespeare sometimes describes, in a general way, countries he had never seen, as in that exquisite description of Sicily in the “Winter’s Tale,”— “The climate’s delicate, the air most sweet, Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing The common praise it bears”—