FORERUNNERS 29 



of horror.' Gray was far more seriously impressed. After a 

 visit to Scotland in 1765 he bursts out, ' The mountains are 

 ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year. None 

 but these monstrous children of God know how to join so much 

 beauty with so much horror.' But a quarter of a century earlier 

 (in 1739) his letters to his mother and West show him to have 

 been in love with ' cliffs, precipices, and torrents,' and if he shud- 

 dered on the Mont Cenis we must recollect that he crossed it in 

 November, and even then, despite the wintry gloom, found ' some- 

 thing fine ' in the scenery. Mr. Gosse, in his Life of Gray, tells 

 us, ' In his youth he was the man who first looked on the sublimities 

 of Alpine scenery with pleasure, and in old age he was to be the 

 pioneer of Wordsworth in opening the eyes of Englishmen to the 

 exquisite landscapes of Cumberland.' 1 Cowper and Gray were 

 sensitive minds, leaders of their generation. But the attitude 

 of a lady like Mrs. Thrale shows how much the old terror of 

 rough places was giving way. She expresses herself as pleased 

 with the Mont Cenis and delighted with the scenery of the asceht 

 to the Brenner through the Trentino. 



The love of mountains, which Conrad Gesner had planted in 

 Switzerland and Haller had watered, was taking root ; but it was 

 de Saussure who spread it over Western Europe. Yet Rousseau 

 must not be deprived of his due. To the sterner aspects of nature 

 he was blind, to the voice of the mountains he shared the deafness 

 of his generation. But in his appreciation of the sub -alpine 

 region, the harmonious landscapes and delicious details of the 

 Swiss lowlands, their lakes and lawns, their brown broad -roofed 

 farms, their rich orchards and vineyards and narcissus meadows, 

 he was a true pioneer. He inculcated and inspired a feeling which 

 was capable of far wider application than he himself gave it. He 

 helped to open men's eyes to the call of landscape, and in so 

 doing he to some extent prepared their minds to take interest in 

 and understand its more sublime forms. He was in this sense, 

 but in this sense alone, a forerunner of de Saussure. Rousseau 

 was the most eloquent of the many voices of the time that ex- 

 pressed a feeling already in the air, the sentimental regard for 

 natural scenery, untouched by human needs and incidents. 



1 Gilpin's Tours in the Lakes and Scotland were visible signs of the same 

 spirit of appreciation (circa 1780). 



