DISCOURS PR^LIMINAIRE, ETC. 289 



double or triple rainbows which follow him as he shifts his view-point. 

 Then snow avalanches leap down with a rapidity comparable to that 

 of lightning, traverse and cut paths through the forests, breaking 

 short the tallest trees with a noise like that of thunder. Farther 

 distant, great expanses bristling with eternal ice give the idea of a sea 

 suddenly frozen at the moment when the north wind had raised its 

 waves. And beside this ice, in the midst of these terrifying objects, 

 are delicious retreats ; smiling meadows, fragrant with the scent of 

 a thousand flowers as rare as they are beautiful and medicinal, present 

 a sweet image of spring in a fortunate clime and offer the botanist 

 the richest harvest. 



The human interest in the Alps is no less than the physical. For 

 if mankind are in the main everywhere the same, everywhere the 

 plaything of the same passions produced by the same needs, yet if 

 there is anywhere in Europe where one may hope to find men who 

 have exchanged the savage for the civilised state without losing their 

 natural simplicity, it is in the Alps that one must look for them, in 

 these high valleys where there are no landlords or men of wealth, nor 

 any frequent incursion of strangers. Those who have seen the peasant 

 only in the environs of cities have no idea of the child of nature. Near 

 towns, subject to masters, bound to a humiliating deference, crushed 

 by vain show, corrupted and despised even by those of his fellows 

 who are themselves debased by service, he becomes as abject as his 

 corrupters. 



But the peasant of the Alps, seeing none but his equals, forgets 

 the existence of any more powerful class, his soul is ennobled and 

 elevated ; the services which he renders, the hospitality which he 

 shows, have in them nothing servile or mercenary, one sees in him 

 sparks of that honourable pride which is the companion and guardian 

 of all the virtues. How often, arriving at nightfall in some remote 

 hamlet where there was no kind of inn, have I knocked at a cottage 

 door, and then, after some inquiry as to the object of my journey, 

 been received with a courtesy, a cordiality, and a disinterestedness of 

 which it would be difficult to find examples elsewhere. And who 

 would believe that in those savage retreats I have come across thinkers, 

 men who, by the unaided strength of their native intelligence, have 

 raised themselves far above the superstitions on which the lower 

 classes in towns feed with avidity ? 



Such are the pleasures tasted by those who devote themselves to 

 the study of mountains. For myself, I have from childhood felt for 

 them the most positive passion ; I still recollect the thrill that I 

 experienced the first time that my hands clasped the rocks of the 



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