THE LOVE OF MOUNTAINS 231 



shepherd that no one had been up the mountain for 

 fifty years, and that nothing was to be seen upon it 

 but rocks and brambles. Still they persevered, and 

 at length stood on the summit. The view was 

 superb. The Alps seemed close at hand ; the sea, 

 the valley of the Rhone and the mountains about 

 Lyons were in full view. Petrarch's thoughts ran 

 much upon the mountains famous in literature, upon 

 Olympus and Athos, and Hannibal's passage of the 

 Alps. After a time he took out of his pocket a 

 volume of St. Augustine, and lit upon words which 

 rebuked those who wonder at the mountains, the sea, 

 and the stars, but neglect themselves. He descended 

 in silence, reflecting that there is nothing admirable 

 except the mind. 



Gray's diary of a tour in the North of England, 

 though written as late as 1769, is among the earlier 

 indications of interest in wild scenery. Till then the 

 hills had been despised for their barrenness, and 

 dreaded for their ruggedness and danger. It was 

 only when better police and better roads had driven 

 away fear that men began to make mountains their 

 playground. 



Rousseau's Nouvelle Helo'ise (1760) may be said to 

 have first awakened a lively interest in Swiss scenery. 

 Within forty years of the publication of that novel 

 more than sixty descriptions of travels in Switzerland 

 appeared. Gibbon in 1785 was astonished at the 

 crowds of English who haunted the lake of Geneva. 

 Goethe and Byron drew inspiration direct from 

 Rousseau, and later writers, who perhaps never read 

 Rousseau attentively, such as Renan and Ruskin, 



