PURITY OF BEAUTY 107 



We like to have attained even once in a lifetime to 

 a world so refined and pure. 



Cold it may be — and dangerous. But we soon 

 forget the cold. And the dangers only string us 

 up to meet them, so that we are in a peculiarly alert, 

 observant mood. And we have a secret joy in 

 watching Nature in her most threatening aspects 

 and in measuring ourselves against her. 



White it may be, but not colourless. For 

 the whiteness of the snow is most exquisitely 

 tinged with blue. The lakelets on the glacier 

 are of deepest blue. They are encircled by minia- 

 ture cliffs of ice of transparent green. The blue- 

 ness of the sky is of a depth only seen in the highest 

 regions. And the snowy summits of the mountains 

 are tinged at sunset and dawn with finest flush of 

 rose and primrose. So with all the whiteness there 

 is, too, the most delicate colouring. 



Standing thus on the glacier and looking up to 

 the snoviy peaks all round us, we think how, wholly 

 unobserved by men, they have reared themselves to 

 these high altitudes and there remain century by 

 century unseen by any human being. From deep 

 within the interior of the earth they have arisen. 

 And they are only touched by the whitest snow- 

 flakes. They are only touched by snowflakes 

 fashioned ^from the moisture which the sun's rays 

 have raised off the surface of the Indian Ocean, and 

 which the monsoon winds have transported in in- 

 visible currents, high above the plains of India, till 

 they are gently precipitated on these far-distant 

 heights. 



