On this I called for a mug of
ale (which I did not drink) in order to enable me the better to
settle her reckoning.
At this same time I saw my innkeeper of Tideswell, who, however, had
not, like me, come on foot, but prancing proudly on horseback.
As I proceeded, and saw the hills rise before me, which were still
fresh in my memory, having so recently become acquainted with them
in my journey thither, I was just reading the passage in Milton
relative to the creation, in which the Angel describes to Adam how
the water subsided, and
"Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky."
Book VII., 1. 285.
It seemed to me, while reading this passage, as if everything around
me were in the act of creating, and the mountains themselves
appeared to emerge or rise, so animated was the scene.
I had felt something not very unlike this on my journey hither, as I
was sitting opposite to a hill, whose top was covered with trees,
and was reading in Milton the sublime description of the combat of
the angels, where the fallen angels are made, with but little regard
to chronology, to attack their antagonists with artillery and
cannon, as if it had been a battle on earth of the present age.
