Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1857-02-06
THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLED.

has fallen.
THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLED.
q might devote half a volume to a
description of the fantastic and incom-
prehensible arrangements of those rocks
and their viens but all that is necessary
for the general reader to know or re-
member is this broad fact of the undula-
ton of their whole substance. For
there is something, it seems to me, mex
pressibly marvellous in this phenome-
non, largely looked at. It is to be re-
membered that these rocks are the rocks
which, on the average, will be ofenest
observed, and with the greatest interest.
/ by the human race. The central gran
/ ties are too far removed, the lower rocks
too common, to be carefully studied (;
these slaty crystallines form the noblest
hills that are easily accessible. and seem
to be thus calculated especially to attract
observation and reward it. Well, we be-
gln to examine them; and, first, we find
notable hardness in them, and a thor
ough boldness Of general character, which
makes Us regard them as very types of
rocks. They have nothing of the look
OF dried earth about them, nothing petty
or limited in the display of their bulk
Where they are, they seem to form the
world; no mere bank of a river here. or
a lane there, peeping out among the
hedges or forests; but from the lowest
valley to the highest clouds, all is theirs
one adamantine dominion and rigid au-
thority of rock. We yield ourselves to
the impression of their external. uncop-
querable stubbornness of strength; their
mass seems the least yielding, least to be
sottened, or in anywise dealt with by any
external force, of all earthly substances.
And, behold, as we look farther into it, it
Is all touched and troubled, like waves
upon a summer breeze; rippled far more
delicately than seas or lakes are rippled
they only undulate along their surface
this rock trembles through its very fibre,
like the chords of an Eolian harp-like.
the stillest air Of spring with the echoes
OF a child's voice. Into the heart of
these great mountains,-through every
tossing Of their boundless crests. and
deep beneath all their unfathomable de-
files, flows that strange quiyering of their
substance. Other and weaker things
seem to express their subjection to an in
finite power only by momentary terrors +:
as the weeds bow down before the fever
ish wind, and the sound of the going in
the tops of the taller trees passes on be-
fore the clouds, and the ftfuI opening ofI
pale spaces on the dark water, as if some
invisible hand were casting dust upon ii,
gives warning of the anger that is to
come, we may well imagine that there Is /
indeed fear passing upon the grass, and
leaves and waters, at the presence of some
great spirit commissioned TO lei the tenn
pest loose; but the terror passes, and
their sweet rest is perpetually restored
TO the pastures and the waves. Not so
to the mountains. They, which at first
seem strengthened beyond the dread of.
any violence or change, are yet also or
dained to bear upon them the symbol ofI
a perpetual fear; the tremor which fades
from the soft lake and gliding river is
sealed to all eternity, upon a rock; and
while things that pass visibly from birth
to death may sometimes forget their fee
bleness, the mountains are made to pos
sess a perpetual memorial oftheir infancy
that infancy which the prophet saw in
his vision: / beheld the earth, and 10 4
it was without form, and void, and the
heavens, and.they had no light. I be-
held mountains, and 10 they trem5led !;
and all the hills na0red Li,yhtE,,'"