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.