there is moral as well as bodily wholesomeness in a mountain walk, if the walker has the understanding heart, and eschews picnics. it is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk:

"in the wilderness alone,

there where nature worships god."

it is well to be in places where man is little and god is great—where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. it abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process.

it is not favourable to religious feeling to hear only of the actions and interference of man, and to behold nothing but what human ingenuity has completed. there is an image of god's greatness impressed upon the outward[pg 18] face of nature fitted to make us all pious, and to breathe into our hearts a purifying and salutary fear.

in cities everything is man, and man alone. he seems to move and govern all, and be the providence of cities; and there we do not render unto c?sar the things which are c?sar's, and unto god the things which are god's; but god is forgotten, and c?sar is supreme—all is human policy, human foresight, human power; nothing reminds us of invisible dominion, and concealed omnipotence—it is all earth, and no heaven. one cure of this is prayer and the solitary place. as the body, harassed with the noxious air of cities, seeks relief in the freedom and the purity of the fields and hills, so the mind, wearied by commerce with men, resumes its vigour in solitude, and repairs its dignity.

sydney smith.