30 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT BE SAUSSURE 



He was a preacher of the return to nature, but he was no 

 prophet of the love of the Alps. His bust may be a most 

 suitable adornment in a sub-alpine resort, it would be obviously 

 out of place in any Alpine centre. It was de Saussure who 

 led the nations to lift up their eyes to the eternal snows. 

 Born and bred within a walk of the cliffs of the Saleve, the 

 rocky rampart the crest of which overshadows the homes and 

 forms a playground for the holidays of the Genevese, and 

 brought up in sight of the glaciers of Mont Blanc, he drew 

 the inspiration of his life's work from the scenes familiar to 

 his childhood. 1 



1 The foregoing chapter makes, I need hardly say, no pretence to be a com- 

 plete or even a general sketch of the early works more or less connected with 

 mountains and their writers. Such sketches have been undertaken by very able 

 hands by Leslie Stephen in The Playground of Europe, by Sir Frederick Pollock 

 in the Alpine volume of the Badminton series, by Mr. Coolidge in several of his 

 scholarly and laborious works. (See Josias Simler el lea Origines de VAlpinisme, 

 Grenoble, 1904.) Mr. Gribble's volume, The Early Mountaineers, 1899, contains 

 some curious reprints. 



