Toimi and Countrij Delights 



this form of barbarism, perhaps, no nation rivals 

 the British ; and it may be that the British, as 

 a nation, are the chief mountain-lovers. 



To the Greeks and Romans, says Humboldt, 

 only the homely was pleasant in a landscape, 

 not what we call the wild and romantic. To 

 the Middle Ages, and for long after the 

 Renaissance, the idea of the romantic was 

 foreign ; and the love of Nature in her savage, 

 and what we call her grander, moods found 

 until the latter half of the eighteenth century 

 only rare and isolated expression. The last 

 two centuries have witnessed many revolutions 

 in human thought and sentiment. Perhaps 

 none is more striking than this new-born 

 worship of the mountain. 



In the great days of Rome, innumerable 

 travellers were constantly traversing the passes 

 of Switzerland. They saw in them only Livy's 

 fceditas Alpiunty the hideousness of the Alps. 

 They had no eye but for " the difficulties of the 

 narrow mule-paths, the wilderness of ice and 

 snow, the horror of the avalanches." This is 

 the reason why "of the eternal snow of the 

 Alps, ruddy in sunset or sunrise, of the mar- 

 vellous blue of the glaciers, of the magnificence 



57 



