548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



auctorum. Inter alia cujusdam docti et montium amcenitate capti 

 observare licebat illud: 



' ribv opcov Ipcoc, aptozoc,? 



' The love of mountains is best.' In those five words some Swiss pro- 

 fessor anticipated the doctrine of Ruskin and the creed of Leslie Ste- 

 phen, and of all men who have found mountains the best companions 

 in the vicissitudes of life. 



In the annals of art it would be easy to find additional proof of the 

 attention paid by men to mountains three to four hundred years ago. 

 The late Josiah Gilbert, in a charming but too little-known volume, 

 ' Landscape in Art,' has shown how many great painters depicted in 

 their backgrounds their native hills. Titian is the most conspicuous 

 example. 



It will perhaps be answered that this love of mountains led to no 

 practical result, bore no visible fruit, and therefore can have been but 

 a sickly plant. Some of my hearers may feel inclined to point out that 

 it was left to the latter half of the nineteenth century to found climb- 

 ers' clubs. It would take too long to adduce all the practical reasons 

 which delayed the appearance of these fine fruits of peace and an ad- 

 vanced civilization. I am content to remind you that the love of moun- 

 tains and the desire to climb them are distinct tastes. They are often 

 united, but their union is accidental not essential. A passion for golf 

 does not necessarily argue a love of levels. I would suggest that more 

 outward and visible signs than is generally imagined of the familiar 

 relations between men and mountains in early times may be found. 

 The choicest spots in the Alpine region — Chamonix, Engelberg, Disen- 

 tis, Einsiedlen, Pesio, the Grande Chartreuse — were seized on by re- 

 cluses; the Alpine baths were in full swing at quite an early date. I 

 will not count the Swiss Baden, of which a geographer, who was also 

 a Pope, iEneas Silvius (Pius II.) records the . attractions, for it is in 

 the Jura, not the Alps; but Pfafers, where wounded warriors went to 

 be healed, was a scene of dissipation, and the waters of St. Moritz were 

 vaunted as superseding wine. I may be excused, since I wrote this 

 particular passage mys*elf a good many years ago, for quoting a few 

 sentences bearing on this point from ' Murray's Handbook to Switzer- 

 land.' In the sixteenth century fifty treatises dealing with twenty-one 

 different resorts were published. St. Moritz, which had been brought 

 into notice by Paracelsus (died 1541), was one of the most famous 

 baths. In 1501 Matthew Schinner, the famous Prince Bishop of Sion, 

 built ' a magnificent hotel ' at Leukerbad, to which the wealthy were 

 carried up in panniers on the back of mules. Brieg, Gurnigel, near 

 Bern, the baths of Masino, Tarasp and Pfafers were also pomilar in 

 early times. Leonardo da Vinci mentions the baths of Bormio, and 

 Gesner went there. 



