“It was a wide stetchy sweep” [essay]
It was a wide stretchy sweep of lovely blue champaign,
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richly cultivated
and beautifully wooded, and bounded by magnificent mountain ranges: here
fading away, faint and blue and cloudlike toward the south;
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there distinct
and near and lofty, with the green cultivation climbing up their broad flanks.
I had read that the snowy summit of the Mont Titlis was visible from
Strasburg, the consequence of which marvellous information was,
that I metamorphosed every cloud I saw into a mountain, strained my eyes with looking
for that which was out of sight,
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and had at last very nearly argued myself into
a conviction that blue hills were white ones, until our entrance into the narrow
dell above mentioned precluded all farther observations upon the clouds. A
Swiss cottage is a celebrated thing, celebrated far and wide; it has modelled
the Tivolian villas of—Highgate and Hampstead,
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the mock waterfalls and
crocodile stools of the Coliseum
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have extended its fame, and much it delighted
me when first the wide projecting wooden roof and carved galleries and
external stairs looked out to greet us from among the dark pines. What
a host of associations and recollections tumbled in upon me. Mountains,
avalanches, glaciers, cottages, Hannibal, vinegar,
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, Alps, apples, tyrants,
and crossbows came crowding into my brain, jumbled together in most
admired disorder. I thought of nothing connected the whole day.