226 NATURAL BEAUTY 



it was of the Natural Beauty that I wished to tell 

 my friends. And this, again, is the experience of 

 others also. To this day, though I have never since 

 seen them, I remember the beauties of Cader Idris 

 and Dolgelly, Snowdon and Carnarvon, in North 

 Wales, and of the rugged cliffs and long Atlantic 

 waves on the Cornish coast. The Dart, here 

 rippling over boulders and between rocky banks, 

 here in deep, clear salmon pools, here merging into 

 a long inlet of the sea and everywhere framed in 

 wooded hill-sides, I have often again seen. But 

 even if I had not, its beauty would never have de- 

 parted from my memory. And it is the same with 

 the first view of the Alps from the Jura, the view 

 of Lake Geneva, of the Jungfrau, of the Pyrenees 

 from Pau, and of the valley of the Loire. I have 

 never seen those parts of Switzerland and of France 

 since then, but their beauty remains with me to this 

 day. And it is of their beauty that I have ever after- 

 wards been naturally inclined to speak. When I 

 talk about the Loire I do not tell my friends that it 

 rises in a certain place, is so many miles long, at 

 certain parts has a certain width, depth, and 

 volume, and eventually flows into a certain sea. 

 What I naturally speak about is its beauty, the rich 

 valley through which it flows, the graceful bridges 

 by which it is spanned, the picturesque old towns 

 and romantic castles on the banks. And this is the 

 common habit of mankind. Our friends may bore 

 us — ^and we may" bore our friends — with intermin- 

 able accounts of the discomfort and inconveniences 

 and the petty little incidents of travel. But when 

 they and we have got through that and settle down 



