“The mountain is the religion of the landscape”

Our own hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland were most frequently my place of refuge. No scenes have given me more lasting pleasure. The mountains, it is said, are not lofty enough for sublimity. But as the light and cloud play on them, and they arise around you in dark, or silver, or purple masses, the effect is very magical—under certain lights, even perfectly sublime. Scenes more spiritual Switzerland itself could hardly produce. But all comparisons are futile. We grow to love a country, as we grow to love a person, because we have there exercised our faculty of loving. Nature here is gentle and yet elevating. Who has not noticed how all the pleasing accessories of a fertile and homely landscape gain infinitely by their union with the mountain-ranges? The stream runs conscious of the purple hills; every tree and flower has something more than its own beauty when it grows in the shadow, or in the light, of the glorious mountains. Wherever they rear their mystic summits to the clouds, there is an indescribable commingling of heaven and of earth. The mountain is the religion of the landscape.

William Smith, Thorndale, or, The conflict of opinions (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1858), p. 90.