Pyrenees is mountain chain of southwestern Europe that consists of flat-topped massifs and folded linear ranges. It stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic Ocean on the west. The structure of the Pyrenees is characterized by patterns of relief and of underlying structure running in a north–south sequence (like the base rock); these alternate with depressions, some of which are the result of internal deformations, others of erosion of less resistant overlying deposits.
After an excursion to the Pyrenees in his early life, John Stuart Mill found the mountain scenery to be his "ideal of natural beauty". When Mill was tortured by his mental crisis, this early memory resonated with William Wordsworth's poetry, the latter of which became "a medicine for my state of mind". Before his mental crisis, Mill was deeply influenced by Jeremy Bentham's theory of happiness, which claimed that pleasure was homogeneous and drew an arbitrary relation between pleasure and its objects. Mill's breakdown arose when he realized the psychological impossibility of living according to this view. Fortunately, Wordsworth's poetry, along with Mill's predilection for rural mountain scenes, had a healing effect on his mind. They imparted an ideal of Self that can feel in a spontaneous, authentic manner. With this ideal, Mill developed the notion that the cultivation of character and sentiments is an essential element of a good life. Having realized the possibility of reconciling rationalism with inner sentiments, he mourned a lively youth of which he had been deprived (think about what trainings he was exposed to in his childhood). Ultimately, through his engagement with Wordsworth (which was enhanced by Mill's excursion to the Pyrenees), Mill was able to recover from his nervous breakdown and reconcile hedonic utilitarianism with his new view of the inner life of the individual.
Sources:
Mckinnell, Liz. “‘A Medicine for My State of Mind’: The Role of Wordsworth in John Stuart Mill's Moral and Psychological Development.” Utilitas, vol. 27, no. 1, 2015, pp. 43–60. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/abs/medicine-f…. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Pyrenees. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.
https://www.artmediacom.com/en/mountain-landscape-of-the-19th-century-t…. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.