28 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



to visit the glaciers. In 1754 he sailed round the Lake of Geneva 

 with his friend, old Deluc, a radical watchmaker, and his two 

 talented sons, and in the same year the young Delucs made the 

 first of their excursions into the Alps of Savoy. 1 But it did not 

 occur to Rousseau, though he boasts himself a stout pedestrian, 

 to join his friends in any of their Alpine rambles. In all his life 

 he never crossed any Alpine pass, except the Mont Cenis and 

 Simplon on his way to and from Italy, and these only of necessity. 

 Of their scenery he says nothing. 



It may help me to emphasise Rousseau's point of view as I 

 conceive it, if I compare it with that of some of his contemporaries 

 in our own country. We find parallel instances of the period of 

 transition in English literature. Take Cowper : to the English 

 poet, we are told, ' everything he saw in the fields was an object 

 of interest, he never in all his life let slip the opportunity of 

 breathing fresh air and conversing with nature.' But when we 

 look further into his letters it has to be admitted that the dweller 

 in the fens found the scenery of Sussex oppressively mountainous ! 

 Still, he gave voice to a fresh tendency in the mind of his generation, 

 he took the lead in setting an example of close and sympathetic 

 natural observation. He was related to Wordsworth in the same 

 sense that Rousseau was related to Byron and Shelley. Other 

 contemporary writers show more or less trace of the coming 

 change. Addison was but slightly touched by it, yet he antici- 

 pated Rousseau in appreciating to a certain extent the wilder 

 aspects of the Lake of Geneva. He found the ' near prospect of 

 the Alps from Thonon ' affected his mind with an ' agreeable kind 



in Haut Valais, and that no highway of traffic passed through it (Nouvdle Heloise, 

 part i. letter 23). Now the villages mentioned by Bourrit are within the 

 limits of the Haut Valais, and they lie close to, but well off, the Simplon road. 

 Another point worthy of note is that, being near the linguistic frontier, French 

 is understood by at least a portion of their population, and to Rousseau as well 

 as to Bourrit this would be of importance in any attempts at social inter- 

 course. Further, I find in the Jahrbuch of the Schweizer Alpenklub (vol. lii. 

 p. 97) a description of these villages and the primitive customs they still 

 retain, that corresponds very exactly with Rousseau's. 



1 Byron, in his letters (April 9, 1817), alludes to the trip. At that date 

 the elder son, J. A. Deluc, F.R.S., then a nonagenarian, was living at or near 

 Windsor. Byron had heard from his sister that the old man, having had ' The 

 Prisoner of Chillon ' read to him, recalled his trip with Rousseau and recognised 

 the correctness of the descriptions in the poem. See also the Confessions for 

 an account of the voyage, part ii. book 8. 



