_ ti =—_ ~~ 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION FE. 617 
to refer to their literature. I remember Tennyson pointing out to me in a volume 
of translations from the Chinese a poem, written about the date of King Alfred, 
in praise of a picture of a mountain landscape. But I must return to the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe; I may go earlier—even back 
to Dante. His allusions to mountain scenery are frequent; his Virgil had all the 
craft of an Alpine rock-climber. Read Leonardo da Vinci's ‘ Notes, Conrad Gesner’s 
‘ Ascent of Pilatus ;’ study the narratives of the Alpine precursors Mr. Coolidge 
has collected and annotated with admirable industry in the prodigious volume he 
has recently brought out. 
It is impossible for me here to multiply proofs of my argument, to quote 
even a selection from the passages that show an authentic enthusiasm for moun- 
tains that may be culled from writers of various nations prior to a.p. 1600. I 
must content myself with the following specimens, which will probably be new to 
most of my hearers. 
Benoit Marti was a professor of Greek and Hebrew at Bern, and a friend of the 
great Conrad Gesner (I call him great, for he combined the qualities of a man of 
science and a man of letters, was one of the fathers of botany as well as of 
mountaineering, and was, in his many-sidedness, a typical figure of the Renais- 
sance). Marti, in the year 1558 or 1559, wrote as follows of the view from his 
native city :— 
‘These are the mountains which form our pleasure and delight’ (the Latin is 
better—‘ delicize nostre, nostrique amores’) ‘when we gaze at them from the 
higher parts of our city and admire their mighty peaks and broken crags that 
threaten to fall at any moment. Here we watch the risings and settings of the 
sun and seek signs of the weather. In them we find food not only for our eyes 
and our minds but also for our bellies;’ and he goes on to enumerate the dairy 
products of the Oberland and the happy life of its population. I quote again this 
good man: ‘ Who, then, would not admire, love, willingly visit, explore, and 
climb places of this sort? I assuredly should call those who are not attracted by 
them mushrooms, stupid, dull fishes, and slow tortoises’ (‘fungos, stupidos in- 
sulsos pisces, lentosque chelones’). ‘In truth, I cannot describe the sort of affec- 
tion and natural love with which I am drawn to mountains, so that I am never 
happier than on the mountain crests, and there are no wanderings dearer to me 
than those on the mountains.’ ‘They are the theatre of the Lord, displaying 
monuments of past ages, such as precipices, rocks, peaks and chasms, and never- 
melting glaciers ;’ and so on through many eloquent paragraphs. 
I will only add two sentences from the preface to Simler’s ‘ Vallesize et Alpium 
Descriptio,’ first published in 1574, which seem to me a strong piece of evidence 
in favour of my view :—‘ In the entire district, and particularly in the very lofty 
ranges by which the Vallais is on all sides surrounded, wonders of Nature offer 
themselves to our view and admiration. With my countrymen many of them 
have through familiarity lost their attraction; but foreigners are overcome at the 
mere sight of the Alps, and regard as marvels what we through habit pay no 
attention to.’ 
Mr. Coolidge, in his singularly interesting footnotes, goes on to show that the 
books that remain to us are not isolated instances of a feeling for mountains in 
the age of the Renaissance. The mountains themselves bear, or once bore, records 
even more impressive. Most of us have climbed to the picturesque old castle at 
Thun and seen beyond the rushing Aar the green heights of the outposts of the 
Alps, the Stockhorn, and the Niesen. Our friend Marti, who climbed the former 
peak about 1558, records that he found on the summit ‘tituli, rythmi, et pro- 
verbia saxis inscripta und cum imaginibus et nominibus auctorum. Inter alia 
cujusdam docti et montium ameenitate capti observare licebat illud : 
‘O Tay bpwy pws epioros.’ 
‘The love of mountains is best.’ In those five words some Swiss professor antici- 
pated the doctrine of Ruskin and the creed of Leslie Stephen, and of all men who 
have found mountains the best companions in the vicissitudes of life, 
