50.  Another feeling, with which one is impressed during a mountain ramble, is humility.  I found fault with the insignificance of the Swiss cottage, because “it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility.”  Now, had it not been seen to be pretending, it would not have been felt to be insignificant; for the feelings would have been gratified with its submission to, and retirement from, the majesty of the destructive influences which it rather seemed to rise up against in mockery.  Such pretension is especially to be avoided in the mountain cottage:  it can never lie too humbly in the pastures of the valley, nor shrink too submissively into the hollows of the hills; it should seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the mountain for protection:  and should appear to owe to its weakness, rather than to its strength, that it is neither overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the other.

51.  Such are the chief attributes, without which a mountain cottage cannot be said to be beautiful.  It may possess others, which are desirable or objectionable, according to their situation, or other accidental circumstances.  The nature of these will be best understood by examining an individual building.  The material is, of course, what is most easily attainable and available without much labor.  The Cumberland and Westmoreland hills are, in general, composed of clay-slate and gray-wacke, with occasional masses of chert[7] (like that which forms the summit of Scawfell), porphyritic greenstone, and syenite.  The chert decomposes deeply, and assumes a rough brown granular surface, deeply worn and furrowed.  The clay-slate or gray-wacke, as it is shattered by frost, and carried down by torrents, of course forms itself into irregular flattish masses.  The splintery edges of these are in some degree worn off by the action of water; and, slight decomposition taking place on the surface of the clay-slate, furnishes an aluminous soil, which is immediately taken advantage of by innumerable lichens, which change the dark gray of the original substance into an infinite variety of pale and warm colors.  These stones, thus shaped to his hand, are the most convenient building materials the peasant can obtain.[8] He lays his foundation and strengthens his angles with large masses, filling up the intervals with pieces of a more moderate size; and using here and there a little cement to bind the whole together, and to keep the wind from getting through the interstices; but never enough to fill them altogether up, or to render the face of the wall smooth.  At intervals of from 4 ft. to 6 ft. a horizontal line of flat and broad fragments is introduced projecting about a foot from the wall.  Whether this is supposed to give strength, I know not; but as it is invariably covered by luxuriant stonecrop, it is always a delightful object.

[Footnote 7:  That is to say, a flinty volcanic ash.]

[Footnote 8:  Compare the treatment of a similar theme in Modern Painters, vol. iv., chaps. viii.-x.]