In addition to inspiring awe (something landscapes as well as kings were noted for doing in the Romantic period), the benevolent landscape buoys the boat up rather than abusing it, as King George does his colonial subjects. The precipice has a forehead, the knoll with its greenery is yet another crown, and the Hudson river cradles the sky against its breast and carries the boat along on its "majestic" journey. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. When Knickerbocker describes Rip's ascent up the mountains later in the story, he once again uses royal imagery: By contrast, the landscape more effectively arrests onlookers' attention. The image of King George presides over the inn, but the villagers pay more attention to one another's gossip than to the king's likeness. In fact, they are better at inspiring awe and reverence than any human political leader. Knickerbocker uses a simile in the landscape imagery (the fog looks like a king's crown) rather than a more direct metaphor (the fog is a king's crown), emphasizing that the mountains are not quite equivalent to a king. Just as looking at the king was supposed to be like looking at God, these mountains, too, draw the viewer's eye up to heaven. King George, who ruled England as well as the American colonies before the Revolutionary War, claimed to be a conduit for divine power. These mountains inspire awe and reverence, like a king. The fact that the fog around the mountaintops looks like a crown when the setting sun illuminates it further emphasizes that the mountains beneath the fog look like they are wearing royal colors, blue and purple.
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