446 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT BE &AU6SURE 



of science, but a great gentleman and a pleasant companion. 

 An aristocrat who dreaded Rousseau's influence on Genevese 

 politics, he had assimilated some of Rousseau's more generous 

 ideas (it is recorded that Bonnet read Emile out loud to his family), 

 and he had a very warm sympathy for the mountain people as 

 well as a love for the mountains. This appears throughout his 

 pages, but particularly in the chapter given to the Chamoniards, 

 which is full of charming touches. He was obviously a shrewd 

 judge of character, but he is never unkindly, though apt to be 

 severe to anyone who trespasses on his forbearance in scientific 

 matters. His reserve or self-restraint is sometimes suggestive, 

 notably in his treatment of Bourrit, who must at times have been 

 extremely tiresome. 



The illustrations and maps in the Voyages are, I must confess, 

 inadequate and disappointing. De Saussure's appreciation of art 

 was, he says himself, limited, and his journals prove it. His 

 taste for painting, so far as he had any, would seem to have lain 

 in the direction of genre pictures. He refers once or twice to 

 Teniers, and he had some drawings by Hogarth in his possession 

 at the time of his death. He was certainly unfortunate in his 

 choice of artists to illustrate his great work. All that can be said 

 for the plates is that they are better than Griiner's deplorable 

 travesties. Nor can it fairly be urged that there were no better 

 artists available. In 1780 the first volume of Laborde's lavishly 

 illustrated work, already referred to, was issued. 1 Between that 

 date and 1785 the long list of craftsmen catalogued in Ebel's 

 Guide were most of them at work. Linck, Hackert, Wolf, 

 Lory, Bacler d'Albe, our countryman William Pars, and others 

 were producing the innumerable prints, both plain and coloured, 

 of mountain landscapes which still attract connoisseurs and 

 are seen at sales. Unfortunately, de Saussure was content 

 to go to the man who was nearest at hand. Bourrit, on whom 

 he most relied, was meant for a miniaturist ; he had all the 

 prettinesses and pettinesses of the craft. He drew mountains, 

 as it were, under protest ; he was always doing his best to soften 

 their ' horrors,' he was delighted whenever possible to introduce 



1 It is curious that in the long list of subscribers to these volumes there is not 

 one from Geneva. There are over ninety from England, among them de Saua- 

 eure's relative and correspondent, R. H. A. Bennet. 



