11 
“ MOUNTAINEERING.” 
(Illustrated by Lantern Views of Mountain Scenery.) 
By WILLIAM LANCASTER, Junr., January 13th, 1891. 
“J will get me to some far off land, 
Where higher mountains under heaven do stand, 
And touch the blue at rising of the stars, 
Whose voice they hear; where no rough mingling mars 
The great clear voices.” 
The impressions made upon cultivated minds by mountain 
scenery, though not by any means favourable, is both instructive 
and interesting. Addison, in a paper he wrote to the Tattler, 
Goldsmith, and Dr. Johnson, writing of his Scotch trip, all look 
back with anything but pleasurable remembrances; and the 
general public, in a somewhat vague and lazy manner, have the 
idea that men put themselves to very considerable trouble and risk, 
to crawl and struggle up a mountain, only to come down again, 
and be able to say they had been at the top. 
But criticism is only valuable according to the knowledge of 
the critic, and some of our countrymen who have submitted 
themselves to this discipline, speak of it as being not unattended 
with pleasure, and even in some cases indeed as producing the 
highest form of enjoyment the human mind can conceive of. 
Tf this love for mountains be a foolish notion, it is some 
satisfaction to have it shared by such men as John Ruskin, 
Professors Tyndall and Huxley, Mr. Justice Wills, and Mr. 
Justice Grove. 
But it is by the writings of Scott, Shelley, Coleridge, and 
particularly of Wordsworth, that much of this prejudice has 
been dissipated, by their founding of the romantic School of 
Poetry, and they have caused to spring up a more extended 
appreciation of the beauties of nature, in her sterner moods, as 
well as in her peaceful and pastoral aspects. 
Climbing, though a sport, does not appeal only to the physical 
side of our nature, but also to the finer sentiments, when 
pursued in a right way and with a soul open to impressions. 
By the climber taking all due precautions ; by taking the easy 
mountains first; by avoiding starting m uncertain weather; by 
climbing up what he knows to be the right side of the peak, the 
dangers can be reduced to a very small limit ; and, considering 
the vast numbers of all Nationalities who are annually at work 
in the Alps and other centres, the proportion of accidents is 
really very small, 
