button to main menu  Wordsworth's Guide 1810, edn 1835
button title page
button previous page button next page
page 99
was covered, then, during spring and autumn, it might frequently, with much propriety, be compared to Switzerland, - the elements of the landscape would be the same - one country representing the other in miniature. Towns, villages, churches, rural seats, bridges and roads: green meadows and arable grounds, with their various produce, and deciduous woods of diversified foliage which occupy the vales and lower regions of the mountainous world, as in Switzerland, be divided by dark forests from ridges and round-topped heights covered with snow, and from pikes and sharp declivities imperfectly arrayed in the same glittering mantle: and the resemblance would be still more perfect on those days when vapours, resting upon, and floating around the summits, leave the elevation of the mountains less dependent upon the eye than on the imagination. But the pine-forests have wholly disappeared; and only during late spring and early autumn is realized here that assemblage of the imagery of different seasons, which is exhibited through the whole summer among the Alps, - winter in the distance, - and warmth, leafy woods, verdure and fertility at hand, and widely diffused.
Striking, then, from among the permanent materials of the landscape, that stage of vegetation which is occupied by pine-forests, and, above that, the perennial snows, we have mountains, the highest of which little exceed 3000 feet, while some of the Alps do not fall
button next page
button to main menu Lakes Guides menu.