220 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
From the 
high Alps. 
Mississippi bluffs, or the Leopoldsberg near 
Vienna, the great expanse of territory to be 
seen in the vista looks ‘‘ mappy,” and I cannot 
imagine anything more dreary than to live upon 
such heights, straining one’s eyes and imagina- 
tion over the lines of a river-valley, with its 
dotted farms, towns, lakes, and woodlands. 
Doubtless, [am lacking in appreciation just 
here, and yet I must add further that the 
“‘view” from the high Alps is even more de- 
pressing and unsatisfactory to me. The helter- 
skelter confusion of snow-fields, great glaciers, 
gray needles of rock, and flashing blinding light 
may be sublime in the sense that chaos is 
sometimes sublime, but it is hardly beautiful. 
If one looks about him the masses are too big 
for comprehension, the eyes grow weary looking 
at them, and finally the imagination—the 
power to conceive the scene—breaks down. If 
one looks over into the valley it is the world 
seen through the small end of the opera-glass 
again—the scale is too petty, too map-like. In 
fact, the ‘‘ view” from the mountain is some- 
thing more than the unusual produced by dis- 
tance; it is in measure a positive distortion so 
far as our eyes are concerned—something quite 
out of the normal. 
