22 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



from the differing material and social conditions of the times, 

 partly from the desire, as old as Homer, of each generation to be 

 better than, or at least other than its predecessor. I have dwelt on 

 the revolution in gardening because it was a preliminary symptom 

 of the far greater change that was to follow, the passion for wild 

 scenery. But it was some time before the taste for artificial 

 rusticity developed into a love of nature in her sterner moods, 

 even in a region where she displays them so variously as on 

 the shores of Lake Leman and in the highlands of Savoy. The 

 Genevese still employed French architects to build them classical 

 villas, and laid out formal frog-ponds in front of Mont 

 Blanc ! 



How was the greater change brought about ? How was it 

 that first rural and pastoral and then mountain landscape grew 

 into popular favour, that the romantic succeeded to the classical ? 

 I have already alluded, in speaking of landscape gardening, to the 

 part played by Rousseau. Jean Jacques was one of the many 

 voices which heralded a return to nature that was already more 

 or less in the air. He was by far the most eloquent and vibrant 

 among them. But as regards mountains, his appeal was not the 

 first, and it had very definite limits. It had been preceded in 

 Switzerland by another, larger in its scope, which at the time met 

 with extraordinary success. Albrecht von Haller's poem on the 

 Alps, first published at Berne in 1732, obtained at once a European 

 reputation. 1 Haller, as I shall point out in a later chapter, was 

 remarkable in many ways, but his supreme claim to the respect 

 of all lovers of the Alps is that it was his influence that encouraged 

 and inspired a young Genevese professor to make the mountains 

 the study of his life. The conqueror of Mont Blanc looked up 

 to the Bernese man of science as his beloved master. But if 

 Haller was a primary agent and precursor in establishing a new 

 relation between men and mountains, the founder of the cult 

 was de Saussure. It was mainly through his practical example 

 and his writings that the High Alps were brought within the scope 

 of the new interest in natural scenery, that they won for themselves 

 a place, grudgingly yielded at first, on men's lips as ' Beautiful 

 Horrors,' and then came to be hailed by poets as the Palaces of 

 Nature, and accepted by the European public as the Playground of 

 1 Verauch Schweizerischer Oedichte. Bern, 1732. 



