Warlock o'Glenwarlock

I've chosen Easter Sunday to start a new George MacDonald book, after a long hiatus. (Since the last post, I've re-read some GMD favorites, and also read Mary Marson, but didn't comment on Mary Marston here.)

Warlock o'Glenwarlock starts off in the first chapter reminding me why I read GMD, and why CS Lewis read him too. He introduces his main character, the young laird of a diminished estate, and notes of him,

...in the midst of his enjoyment of the world around him, he found himself every now and then sighing after a lovelier nature than that before his eyes. There he read of mountains, if not wilder, yet loftier and more savage than his own, of skies more glorious, of forests of such trees as he knew only from one or two old engravings in the house, on which he looked with a strange, inexplicable reverence: he would sometimes wake weeping from a dream of mountains, or of tossing waters. Once with his waking eyes he saw a mist afar off, between the hills that ramparted the horizon, grow rosy after the sun was down, and his heart filled as with the joy of a new discovery.

Reminiscent of the "longing for joy" CS Lewis describes, especially in "The Pilgrim's Regress", where Lewis describes it as a glimpse of an island in a mist, afar off.