have been pitched bodily down in the the insignificant knob on the ridge grows same heterogeneous and confused fashion. into a gigantic tower; the cupola of Mont So far, then, the pleasure produced by Blanc, which at first seems comparable the sight of mountain scenery is, so to to the dome of St. Paul's, swells into a speak, of the second order of magnitude. mountain itself, equal to Snowdon or Ben It rather forms a delicate sauce than con- Nevis. The mind gradually has to learn stitutes a satisfactory meal of itself. It a new alphabet; it has to interpret symwould not be of sufficiently high flavor bols which to the uninitiated mean mereto render palatable a food otherwise disa- ly green or white spots into signs of vast greeable. By ordinary people it will not tracts of Alp or snow-field; even then, be perceived, except remotely, as harmo- it still has to go through an effort, not nizing by an occult influence, beauties of unlaborious, to substitute some lively and a more positive kind. Even by more practical conception for mere statements cultivated minds it might be obscured in about millions of tons, and billions of presence of more vivid impressions. We cubic feet. may remark in passing, that it belongs to an order of beauty of which we are more apt to be conscious in modern, than men were in former, times. We have in most directions rather exhausted the simpler kinds of pleasure, and in proportion to the greater variety of the objects of thought, become inclined to more complex and more delicate sensations. We, of course, cannot speak of the cause of this change, but its existence goes, as we shall see, some way towards explaining our modern appreciation of the mountains. We pass on, meanwhile, to another class of emotions. There are some sentiments which are suggested to the mind of every observer almost as vividly as the colors are painted on his retina. Certain thoughts must have occurred to every one who has crossed an Alpine pass, from the time when Alaric descended upon Italy to the last tourist up to the end of 1863. To catalogue completely those universal impressions would again be an utterly impossible task. But, as before, the notice of a few of the most prominent may serve to show their general character. In the first place, then, no human being ever looked at a mountain for the first time without being struck by its monstrous and unreasonable size. That an Alp is very big is, in fact, the first and the last impression of some people. Moreover, huge as the bulk looms upon an inexperienced eye, it seems to swell and increase as the eye learns by experience to take some measure of its mass. It is not that the shrimp swells till it becomes a whale, but the whale swells till its head strikes the stars. The faint blue patch expands into broad tracks of hanging meadow; The intensity of this impression is undeniable, but in itself it is neither pleasant nor the reverse. The sense of vast, immeasurable mass may be extremely painful. These huge, unwieldy lumps, these millions of tons of granite and limestone, stuck up on end for no apparent reason, are not of necessity agreeable matter of contemplation. The same sense of vastness may be produced by other natural phenomena-by deserts or forests through which you travel for thousands of miles and many consecutive days. As they are in themselves dreary and monotonous objects, their mere size serves to make their utter dreariness sink down more deeply into our minds. Indeed, the attempt to picture to our minds enormous weight and size is in itself fatiguing to the imagination. Any very strong sensation is apt to become actively painful when excited beyond certain limits, even though pleasant when confined within them. And the mere massiveness of an Alp would therefore only serve to make it a more thoroughly hateful object to any one to whom it was already hateful on other grounds. The same is true, though perhaps less obviously, in the case of most of the other thoughts which can be considered as common to any large classes of observers. Thus, for example, it has probably occurred to most people that mountains are apt to be steep. From the time when Hannibal found them blister his elephants' feet, to the time when the last tourist broke down on the Righi, this peculiarity has been occasionally a source of vexation. That it is the quality which calls forth more admiration than any other is also true, partly from the fact that it is a very easy one of which to judge. Everybody can appreciate the circumstance that the cliffs of the Wetterhorn are "literally overhanging." All tourists express their unfeigned delight at seeing the Staubbach clear nine hundred feet at a bound, with the exception of the severe critic who said that he didn't see what there was to prevent it. Mont Blanc is scarcely admired, because he is built with a certain regard to stability; but the apparently reckless architecture of the Matterhorn brings the traveler fairly on his knees with a respect akin to that felt for the leaning tower of Pisa, or the soaring pinnacles of Antwerp. But why should we always take it for granted that it is necessarily very pleasant to look at something very steep? The consideration of one other peculiarity will throw some light upon this. What strikes the impartial observer as much as any thing is the extreme barrenness of these places. As you leave the plains of Lombardy or the Rhine, you feel that you have undeniably got to a district where nothing will grow that can help it. As the vineyards, the chestnut forests, the corn-fields, and even the pine woods sink successively beneath you, and you climb over the open grass meadows, the stunted rhododendrons, and finally the wretched dabs of lichens sucking at the knobs of hard rock, you feel (even if an enthusiastic mountaineer) a certain dismal sensation, as if the eternal frost was somehow getting into your bones. Now this is a sensation which is emphatically of ambiguous character. The traveler in the English lowlands, indeed, gets as sickened of cultivation as the proverbial grocer's boy of figs. Endless roads between unceasing hedge-rows, an unvarying succession of little ups and little downs, limiting every horizon to a few hundred yards, and all cut up into little parallelograms of corn or turnips, get wearisome in the long run. A bit of unenclosed common becomes as refreshing as an open window in a crowded room. But the same traveler fresh from Western America, from endless stretches of wild forest land, or unbroken undulations of prairie, has his whole frame of mind inverted. He has learned to associate a lively pleasure with every bit of cultivation in the monoto nous wilderness; and, till they have again palled upon him, the succession of fields gives him the same pleasure as a succession of exquisite gardens would do, till he got tired of them. This is illustrated still more forcibly by the well-known statement of dwellers in mountains, who are apt to consider them as personal enemies. They may generously concede to them the possession of certain merits, but on the whole they think them decidedly in the way. The barrenness and steepness of which we have just spoken are pleasant enough to the amateur, but decidedly irritating in practical life. When a man has been brought up among the mountains, he gets to know the bad points in their character. He knows that they are the causes of avalanches, floods, and landslips; that they are bad places for falling; that he has to engage in a severe struggle to coax a few potatoes out of them, and to endanger his life to collect a bundle of hay from their ledges; to an agriculturist, or a porter, or to men in any ordinary walk of life, they are apt to be constantly obnoxious. The difference between his sentiments and those of the tourist is as great as the difference of feeling between the native off whose family the tiger habitually dines, and the cockney who sees it in a cage. Some people would say, that though the tiger was undeniably associated with unpleasant ideas in the native's mind, yet the color of his hide and the symmetry of his limbs would still be beautiful. Doubtless it would if you could draw the attention of the aforesaid native to it; but that is just the point in question. Possibly a Balmat or a Lauener might be as sensible as an Englishman to the beauty of mountain colors. But the sight of the mountain irresistibly suggests thoughts which as completely overpower the sense of color, as the claws and teeth of the tiger produce a certain creeping in the calves of the native's legs which prevents his full appreciation of the striped and tawny hide. He hates the precipice and the waterfall as the huntsman hated "them stinking violets;" they are symbols which to him suggest only too faithfully discomfort and danger, and which fairly wipe out from his mind the fainter impressions of colors, and "lines of aqueous erosion." Whether the mountains are still "beautiful" is a question not worth arguing. The total impression produced is one highly disagreeable. Of this class of impressions, those which are universally produced, we have, of course, only selected a few of the most striking. They all, however, agree in these, which we believe to be characteristic of all. In the first place, they exercise a great power over the imagination; in the second place, that power is as it were neutral; it may either give pain or pleasure, according to the mental condition of the observer. We can only say so far that they are not at all likely to convey a merely indifferent impression; but the nature of that impression will depend either upon the other elements with which they are combined, or upon the condition of the mind affected. They are like some chemical agent which in one combination may be a deadly poison, or in another an energetic medicine; or like a basin of water which seems cold to the hand which is heated and hot to that which is cool. We have now to endeavor to point out some of those peculiarities which determine the precise nature of the effect produced, to indicate the causes which decide whether we are to receive an intense pleasure or an intense pain. The intensity in one direction or the other being assumed, we shall try to explain some of the causes of that intense thrill of pleasure which runs through every true mountaineer on the sight of the glorious cliffs of the Oberland, or the snow wastes of Mont Blanc. We must, however, before pointing out the causes which determine the pleasure or pain, show the true bearings of a difficulty to which we have before adverted. As the present set of feelings depend upon what would generally be called arbitrary associations, the name of beautiful will be generally refused to their causes. An illustration of perhaps rather an undignified order will exemplify this. To our mind, a certain corner of an English street is inextricably bound up with the recollection of Havelock's retreat from Lucknow. A certain stretch of road always calls up a weary mathematical explanation of the theory of the harvest moon. Every one is familiar with these arbitrary associations which have a relation to the mind only of one individual. They are keys which will only open one door. No one would call the house or the bit of road beautiful or ugly on account of them. Let us take a rather different case. There is a certain sluggish stream, one part river and three parts canal, creeping between banks of oozy mud, through flat gray meadows, bounded by monotonous lines of grotesque pollard willows. Yet we never return to the sight of its dull reaches without a lively sense of pleasure. Too many recollections of old friends, of desperate contests, of delightful triumphs, and defeats now scarcely less delightful, come up with the sight, to admit even of indifference to one of its slimy curves. Yet we frankly admit that the Cam is unjustifiably ugly. It is pleasant just as the ugly face of an old friend is pleas ant; and, in both cases, it requires an effort of mind to say whether it is ugly or not. In other words, it requires an effort of mind to realize the effect produced upon the average multitude. There is another stream which no painter can pass without pleasure. Its broad, clear waters reflect banks covered with forest trees, deep, rich meadow land and luxurious gardens, and are fitly "crowned by three arches" of an old bridge and a gray church tower. But it is totally impossible for us to say whether it most strongly recalls images common to all rural scenery of equal merit, or those of bounding outriggers and frantic crowds. To the profane vulgar, indeed, and even to an Oxford man, the Thames at Henley is lovely, and the Cam at Batesbite Lock is hideous. But to an old Cambridge rowing man, they are both beautiful; and possibly the sight of his "reverend sire, Camus," gives him the most pleasure so long as it is tolerably free from dead dogs. If then it is really impossible to disentangle the various threads of association that combine to produce one sensation, what is the distinction between them in language? A bank of rushes pleases at once by its lively color, by the deep, cool water that surrounds it, and by the thought that at that particular spot you had the first glimpse from the corner of your eye of the bows of the hostile boat dropping hopelessly to the rear. The first pleasure is common to all who are not colorblind; the next to the large class who wash; the last belongs only to you and seven of your friends. We choose to ascribe the first two pleasures to a sense of beauty-the last to arbitrary association. The reason of this distinction of language is obvious; the rushes excite the first two classes of pleasure in the minds of every one who sees their color. We therefore consider them as the result of a property inherent not in us, but in the rushes, because the phenomenon is always produced by the rushes, however often we change the mind that perceives them. But we consider the last pleasure to be as it were accidental, dependent upon their being presented to the mind of a particular individual; and we therefore speak of it as a result of his special mental condition, because he is apparently the most essential part of the phenomenon; of course, both the rushes and observers are, in truth, equally essential in every case. of course is, that a great many people have acquired a taste formerly peculiar to one. We conceive that the change by which mountains have now gained the name of beautiful is precisely analogous. We have only to add by way of caution, that we do not mean to say that this universality is a sufficient condition of beauty; it is only one of the necessary conditions. We will now return to our mountains. We will endeavor to mention some of the associations most likely to be excited in the bosom of the common tourist. In doing so we will not endeavor presumptuously to trace out the more profound changes which discriminate the modern from the ancient mould of thought and character. We shall even be content to assume that people on an average are actuated by much the same motives as formerly. We will merely select one of the most prominent changes that has taken place in the conditions of society, and trace out some of the changes in our feelings towards mountains that We therefore consider the true state- may be confidently ascribed to it. By ment to be this: For an indefinite and abstracting this particular set of causes incalculable number of reasons the sight we do not of course deny or ignore the of external objects produces a very keen existence of others far more general and pleasure. We do not generally call these profound. We will try, by taking them objects beautiful, unless (besides fulfilling singly, to form some kind of estimate of certain other conditions) they produce the share due to them in a result due to this pleasure in the minds of a very the combined action of many others. large number of people. We merely What is the first thought that occurs to say that they call up pleasant associa- you as a turn of the valley reveals to you tions when the pleasure is excited in a for the first time the lion-like mass of the very small class; and the reason of the Wetterhorn towering over the pine fordistinction is, that beauty, as we have ests into the sky? If you are one of the before pointed out, is popularly spoken harmless enthusiasts stigmatized as climbof as a property inherent, not in our- ers, clamberers, and by other offensive selves, but in the object. We can not see, epithets, you will probably think first of however, that the pleasures are to be the knife-edge where you perched with classified under different heads. As the your feet dangling over ten thousand feet association is extended by degrees, and of thin mountain air, with apparently nobecomes the property of a class, instead thing but the cliff jackdaws to break of an individual, and afterwards the your fall into the garden of the inn becommon property of a large class, in- low. Then you trace the ledge of turf stead of a very small one, its object grad- where you took off your gaiters, smoking ually gains the dignified appellation of the pipe of peace, preparatory to a race beautiful. There was probably a time over the Alps to the valley. If a less amwhen people said, that eccentric Sir Wal-bitious tourist, you think of the quiet ter Raleigh likes that nasty weed, to- evenings under the veranda of the Adbacco. The great part of the male sex would now say, Sir Walter Raleigh had the good taste to appreciate the exquisite flavor of tobacco. The only difference ler where you watched the flush of sunset on the hills, and felt sublimely indifferent to The Times and Reuter's telegrams; or you see the rhododendron beds where you basked at the top of the fil "their manifest destiny," and a crowdWengern Alps, listening to the thunder ed population overflow the plains from the of the Jungfrau avalanches, and wonder- Alleghanies to the Rockies, the inhabiting that any man should be fool enough ants of Chicago (then to be counted by to walk who could ride. Such as these the million) and the Christian population are perhaps the first associations. Why of Salt Lake City will doubtless make are they so inexpressibly delightful? pilgrimages to the Chamouni of the disFor much the same reason that the trict with an enthusiasm comparable to schoolboy likes his playground, or a ours. The lungs of the world will rise in workingman likes the Victoria Park. It interest just as the "lungs of London" is a thing not very surprising that the have done. Hyde Park has nothing Alps should have become the playground very attractive in its own scenery, though of nations; that the only bit of Europe it looks very well to the lawyer emergwhich neither railroads nor cultivation ing from his gloomy haunts. can materially alter should be a pleasant relief from the modern state of society. Professor Tyndall is one of the most eloquent of modern rhapsodists on Alpine scenery; and the chord which runs through all his descriptions is the intense pleasure to the scientific mind and body of a release from stinking chemicals and crowded lecture-rooms, conferred by the keen mountain air taken in a shootingjacket. The whole stand-point (to use a very unpleasant word) from which we look at them is altered. Instead of coming as our ancestors must have done, like men turned out at night from a warm fireside into the bleak wilderness which they could scarcely fence out, we turn as tired Londoners on a holiday into the "Crystal Palace" (another word more than unpleasant). It will be easy to enlarge upon this. We might take the inverse case. We have heard a Swiss guide, looking at the matter from the inverted point of view, declare rapturously his preference of the view from Vauxhall Station, across the chimney-pots of Lambeth, stretching "as far as the eye could reach," to anything visible from Mont Blanc. The same guide showed that this was not owing to any want of sensibility by his intense delight on a first sight of the sea-the boundless plain being as pleasant to him as the barren, confined Alpine gorges to us. Another curious illustration to us is the uniform disgust with which travelers always seem to regard the Rocky Mountains. They must, we presume, be as beautiful as the Alps to us; but the Alps, minus civilization and plus grizzly bears, red Indians, and general discomfort, seem to be an offensive phenomenon. Whenever the time comes when the Western States ful This change of circumstances is perhaps sufficient of itself to account for the fact that the wild and barren nature of mountain scenery, one, as we have before remarked. of its most striking characteristics, is as much a source of pleasure to us as it was of pain to former observers. All the associations which we have with the Alps are of a distinctly agreeable character; and they are associations which could have no existence except under our peculiar circumstances. Mr. Ruskin has an elaborate discussion on what he calls "the mountain gloom." We doubt whether it requires much discussion. A man is not unnaturally gloomy after spending three or four months in one shirt, supported on bread of granitic texture, washed down with milk and water, three hours from the nearest village, and seeing about two travelers in the course of the summer. The views which he will take of Alpine scenery are apt to be materially different from those of the gentleman who comes to get a breath of fresh air on the same Alps after a year spent in inhaling the London fog. But this is of course only one of many reasons. It will account, perhaps, for our looking at the mountains in an unprejudiced spirit, ready to appreciate whatever pleasant thoughts may be associated with or suggested by them. One impediment has been removed from our perceptions which must have prevented others from the unrestrained use of their faculties. We have an advantage similar to that which a painter would enjoy if suddenly dropped from a balloon on to the summit of Mont Blanc, instead of panting up to it only fit to throw himself flat on the snow. We have thus shown that in our case |