DE SAUSSURE IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 443 



he taught its students not to make random and romantic guesses, 

 but to collect, and reason from, carefully observed facts. He 

 demonstrated that it was their business to use the picture of the 

 earth presented by the geographer, and the particulars as to the 

 composition of its surface supplied by the mineralogist, as a 

 starting-point for ascertaining, as far as possible, the manner and 

 dates of its structural changes. Geologists had, he argued, to 

 pursue their task by close investigation of the material at hand, 

 by examining carefully the relative situations of the rocks and 

 their strata, and finally by testing their chemical composition. 



To de Saussure's merits as a writer, apart from his qualifica- 

 tions 8(8 a man of science, many excellent critics have borne 

 testimony. First of these in order of time (1810) comes Cuvier l 

 in the official Eloge I have already quoted. De Candolle, Topffer, 

 Alphonse Favre, Sainfce-Beuve, Sayous, have all paid their tribute 

 to the charm to be found in the Voyages by the persevering reader. 



Ruskin throughout his life was enthusiastic in his appreciation ; 

 he chose, he tells us, for his present on his fifteenth birthday a copy 

 of the Voyages, and in his works he frequently refers to de 

 Saussure in enthusiastic terms. 2 Yet in this country the Voyages 

 are little read, and, despite the fashion for Alpine literature, 

 command but a low price. 



What are the grounds of this relative neglect ? In his own 

 day de Saussure was criticised for carelessness and a certain 

 provincialism in his style, for the absence of the ornamental 

 phraseology customary in works of that date, and for a homeliness 

 alleged to be beneath the dignity of so great a subject. The public 

 missed the sounding phrases of Buff on, the sentimentality of 

 Rousseau and Bonnet, even, perhaps, the stilted and clumsy 

 rhapsodies of J. A. Deluc, Senebier, and Bourrit. The modern 

 reader will base his criticism on different grounds. His first and 

 most obvious objection will be that the great work has no unity, 

 that it is made up of various ingredients, which have not been 

 sufficiently fused. Many of its chapters, he finds, are mixtures of 

 a geologist's notebook and a traveller's impressions. Others are 



1 Mr. C. E. Mathews was inexact in writing of biographies by Cuvier and de 

 Candolle. Their notices are not more than short articles. 



2 In Prceterita he hails him as ' Papa Saussure.' Mr. Mumm has recently 

 pointed out that Ruskin followed in de Saussure's footsteps by climbing the 

 Buet. (Alpine Journal, voL xxxii. p. 328.) 



