ennobling the most tame scenery;—­yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture.  Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.]

[25] One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances of even two or three miles.  Let any traveller coming down the Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegere.  Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin.]

  [26] The Savoyard’s name for its flower, “Pain du Bon Dieu,” is very
  beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white
  and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin.]

  [27] Ezekiel vii, 10; Hosea vi, 3.

  [28] In “The Mountain Gloom,” the chapter immediately preceding.

  [29] Ruskin refers to The Fulfilling of the Scripture, a book by
  Robert Fleming [1630-94].

SUNRISE ON THE ALPS[30]

VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4

Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green pasture lie like Atlantis,[31] between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their grey shadows upon the plain....  Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light,[32] upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the