118 MOUNTAINS. 



tous question how lie was ever to get over safely 

 to the other side, not with the consideration of 

 the view from the summit. Kichmond Hill and 

 Cooper's Hill, Greenwich and Hampstead, tlie 

 little heights that overhang the river, he could 

 indeed understand and appreciate ; but Snowdon 

 and Helvellyn, Cader Idris and Snaefell, the 

 Grampians and the Cheviots, were to him but 

 huge obstacles thrown in his path by inconsiderate 

 Nature out of pure vexatiousness. As to the 

 Alps and the Apennines, which he sometimes en- 

 countered on his grand tour, he regarded them 

 merely as masses of inhospitable snow stuck of 

 malice pref)ense across the direct highway to 

 Rome and Naples on purpose to obstruct his way 

 south in his own respectable badly hung travel- 

 ling-carriage. 



Railways have probably had more to do than 

 anything else witli the singular alteration which 

 has taken place in the public mind with regard to 

 mountain scenery and mountain-climbing. They 

 have made what used to be the bugbear of the 

 rich into the pleasure and pastime of all classes. 

 More English peojjle probably visit Switzerland 

 in a si!igle year at the present time than visited 

 the Welsh hills or the Lake District in any con- 

 secutive ten years of the last century. From our 

 childhood upward we are made familiar witli hills 

 and with mountain-climbing; and we are gradually 



