" [10]
And yet "if, in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to
the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One
says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has
been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms
and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the
horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the
south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away
in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the
sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like
withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy
be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or
what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce
manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail,
nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime
are developed.
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