a soul more in harmony with man
This is very much in the spirit with which Byron represents the Rhine in Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage, Canto 3, stanza 45ff.: see particularly his summary in
stanzas 59-61. Clerval prefers
the beautiful, with its humanistic overtones, to the sublime with its
otherworldly and supernatural associations. It is indicative that he
centers his descriptions of the landscape upon human images -- the priest
and his mistress, grape-pickers among the vines -- who give historical or
local significance to its details.
