Here There Are None Of
Those Delicate Gradations, Those Intimate, Misty Joinings-On And
Spreadings-Out Into The Distance, Nothing Of That Art Of Air And
Light By Which The Face Of Nature Explains And Veils Itself In
Climes Which We May Be Allowed To Think More Lovely.
A glaring
piece of crudity, where everything that is not white is a solecism
and defies the judgment of
The eyesight; a scene of blinding
definition; a parade of daylight, almost scenically vulgar, more
than scenically trying, and yet hearty and healthy, making the
nerves to tighten and the mouth to smile: such is the winter
daytime in the Alps.
With the approach of evening all is changed. A mountain will
suddenly intercept the sun; a shadow fall upon the valley; in ten
minutes the thermometer will drop as many degrees; the peaks that
are no longer shone upon dwindle into ghosts; and meanwhile,
overhead, if the weather be rightly characteristic of the place,
the sky fades towards night through a surprising key of colours.
The latest gold leaps from the last mountain. Soon, perhaps, the
moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be
mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon
a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house,
between fire and starlight, kind and homely in the fields of snow.
But the valley is not seated so high among the clouds to be
eternally exempt from changes.
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