For the resources of trees
are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither
their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced
to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room
for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The
various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks,
stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier
winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down
together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the
difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls,
gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in
grave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can be
conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland
forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added,
first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible
in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater
than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some
cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer
_visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive
height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of
masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them
continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against
white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused
in dimness of distance.
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