Mountains loomed large in Jefferson’s thought. Monticello, his mountaintop home, was as unusual in its siting as it is iconic: most planters built homes near rivers, but for Jefferson, the soaring vista trumped practicality. Mountains could be tokens of chaos as well as sources of exaltation, however; his descriptions of the violent natural forces that formed the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry, and his discussion (in the following Query) of the Natural Bridge, are classic expressions of Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime—that which has the power to fascinate and to destroy.
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