134 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



collector of scientific tastes. On 5th June de Saussure ascended 

 and measured the height of Etna, the altitude he obtained being 

 34 metres (111 feet) more than that now adopted 3304 metres 

 (10,841 feet). The reflections on the greatness of nature and the 

 littleness of man, inspired by the view from the summit, are 

 recorded at some length in a passage of unusual eloquence in the 

 ' Discours Preliminaire ' to his Voyages. 



From Naples the party returned through Rome to North Italy, 

 stopping at Terni to see the waterfall, and then by Ancona, 

 San Marino, Rimini, Ravenna, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, to 

 Venice. At Padua he renewed his acquaintance with the cele- 

 brated Spallanzani, whom he had already met at Pavia in 1771, 

 and at Venice he again met Boscovich, the mathematician 

 and astronomer who on the suppression of the order of the 

 Jesuits had exchanged his professorship at the Collegio Romano 

 for a chair in the University of Padua. He adds a witty epigram 

 to the description of the latter given to his wife two years 

 previously, and already quoted : 



' He delights,' de Saussure says, ' in making a display of systems 

 and new ideas. His talk is a lecture, and he admires the lecturer 

 (II professe en causant et s' admire professant).' 



The party returned by Tyrol that is, no doubt, by the 

 Brenner 1 and passing through Zurich, Basle, and Berne, reached 

 Geneva in August. It had been de Saussure's intention to publish 

 a ' Naturalist's Tour in Italy,' but his customary diffidence and 

 dislike of literary work led to its indefinite postponement, and the 

 greater part of the letters he wrote to his two chief correspondents, 

 Bonnet and Haller, have perished. The few that have been 

 preserved make us regret their loss. In one of them he speaks of 

 himself as a bad letter -writer ; but bad letter-writers often write 

 the best letters ! 



The only literary results of his journey were two articles, 

 ' Idee Generate de la Constitution Physique d'ltalie,' published 



1 At that date it was for carriage travellers the only alternative to the Mont 

 Cenis. Thus Gibbon, prevented by the war with France from crossing the Mont 

 Cenis to join his friends in Italy, writes to Lady Elizabeth Foster : ' My aged 

 and gouty limbs would have failed me in the bold attempt of scaling St. Bernard, 

 and I wanted patience to undertake the circum-itineration of the Tyrol.' ' Circum- 

 itineration ' is appropriately expressive. 



