220 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
is intensified by the whistle of a curlew, high above 
against the driving clouds, or completed by the desolate 
resentful wail of the peewit. 
But more than all, perhaps, if any one will have 
patience with these cheap Cook’s Tours of reminiscence, 
count in my love the bogs and streams of the highest 
Alps. Not above all, perhaps, for the very limitations of 
the English uplands give them a charm greyer and more 
subtle in some ways than the riotous, unrestrained fer- 
tility of the higher Alps. But the sombre magnificence of 
Ingleborough is sometimes harsh and cold and uncon- 
ducive to one’s moods; the glory of the Alps is always 
obvious and irresistible, at least to those whose artificial 
tastes are not repelled by the obvious. Alas that such 
things should be, but there are actually people who ‘ do 
not like the Alps, who think them banal and chromo- 
lithographic! O pale cold hearts, corrupted with 
terror of admiring the obvious, whose jaded pulse will 
not let itself be stirred by anything that they cannot 
think bizarre, recondite, beyond the comprehension of the 
profane crowd! Thus, in their loves and hates, they are 
for ever flattering their own vanity, and proving to 
themselves that they are not as other men—a needless 
proof, too, for all I know who have hammered out this 
horrid heresy about the mountains, are people of such 
charm that they need no other claim to a pinnacle high 
above their tedious fellow-mortals. Yet, in this one vital 
spot they are weak, lacking courage to adore the easy. 
They are of the same blood with those who pretend that 
the rose and the diamond are not worshipful, because 
they are common. But I will not dive into an analysis 
of that mysterious and even incomprehensible state of 
soul which confuses beauty with rarity; I might dissect 
for ever without result. Instead, I will turn to those 
who have sound, happy minds, and now invite them to 
