122 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



of matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed 

 by nature from her care and disinherited of her favours, 

 left in its original elemental state, or quickened only 

 by one sullen power of useless vegetation.' 1 



While such was the attitude of the man of letters 

 in this country, influences were at work on the Conti- 

 nent which powerfully affected the relations of literature 

 to the whole realm of outer nature, and more especi- 

 ally to mountain-scenery. Rousseau's descriptions, 

 followed by the more detailed and scientific narrative 

 of De Saussure, drew the attention of society to the 

 fascinations of Switzerland and the Alps. But these 

 influences had hardly had time to exert much sway in 

 their application to the scenery of our own country 

 when the genius of Scott suddenly brought the features 

 of the Scottish Highlands into the most popular 

 literature of his day. In his youth the future poet 

 and novelist had paid some visits to the glens and 

 lakes of Perthshire, where he found many a primi- 

 tive custom still remaining, which has since vanished 

 before roads, railways, and tourists. In the year 1810 

 his Lady of the Lake appeared. Thenceforward the 

 stream of summer visitors set in, which has poured 

 in an ever-increasing flood into the Highlands of 

 Scotland. The general interest thus awakened in 

 the glens and mountains of the north was still further 

 intensified by the advent of the Lord of the Isles, and 

 of Waverley, Rob Roy, and the other novels that depict 

 scenes in the Highlands. Certainly no man ever did 

 so much as Walter Scott to make the natural features 

 of his native country familiar to the whole world. 



1 Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775, p. 84. 



