Hermann Kirchner, circa A.D. 1600.
MEN AND MOUNTAINS—MOUNTAIN-HATERS—A LITERARY EXAMPLE—POETS AND PAINTERS—THE PLACE OF ART—ALPINE SCENERY AND ART—THE VARIETY OF THE ALPS—THE SNOW WORLD—MONS. LOPPÉ'S PICTURES—CONCLUSION.
Switzerland, from a distance practically beyond that of the Caucasus at the present day, has in the last thirty years been brought within a few hours of our homes. Increased facilities of travel and of residence in Alpine regions, acting in unison with many less obvious but equally real influences, have extended human sympathy to Nature in her wildest forms and created a new sentiment, the Love of the Alps.
The indifference of men to mountains in past ages has perhaps been exaggerated. The prevalence throughout the world of mountain-worship in different forms seems to show that the great peaks and the eternal snows have before now had power to stir men's minds and to mix with their lives. But the image which has been adored as a god is for a time cast aside, and it is only to distant generations that it becomes valuable for its intrinsic beauty of design and workmanship. In the case of the great ranges the period of neglect had been a long one. In the Europe of the Middle Ages all hilly regions became surrounded by associations of fear and danger. The plan of the universe was indeed held to have been originally divine; but the devil had somehow become clerk of the works, and managed to put in a good deal not in the original specification. Earthquakes, tempests, venomous reptiles and mountains were all accepted as productions of the evil principle.
From this disfavour the mountains have been during the last century slowly emerging. Better acquaintance has led to the discovery of all the beauties and benefits the Alps offer to those who seek them in a proper mood. We have learnt thoroughly to appreciate the variety imparted to all nature by the accidents of hill scenery, to know and love the thousand forms of peaks, the changing charm of lakes and forests, the rush of the grey Swiss torrent under the upright pines, and the blue repose of the Italian stream under the beech shadows. Moreover, Alpine climbing has revealed the wonders of the kingdom of frost and snow. The imprisoned colours of glacier ice, the ruin of its fantastic towers and tottering minarets, the splendour of its fretted and icicle-hung caves are no longer familiar only to Arctic travellers. The overpowering height of some peak soaring majestically heavenwards can never have been felt as it is by those who understand through experience the dimensions and meaning of each rock and patch of snow on its ridges.
The flow of human sympathy towards the mountains has, however, been too recent not to have left many traces of the deep ebb of antipathy which had preceded it. 'Survivals' of the old and narrower tone of thought of a hundred years ago are constantly to be met with in English society. They even penetrate occasionally to the tables-d'hôte of Swiss inns, where they may be recognised by the air of calm superiority generally assumed by the unappreciative, whether in the presence of music, a picture, or a peak.
These representatives of mediæval sentiment are often mediævalists also in their practice. Where their opinions are based on anything besides hereditary prejudice it is very often found if you examine them tenderly that their experience has been coloured, or more correctly speaking obscured, by bodily torture. They have climbed with unboiled peas in their shoes, and without the excuse of their forefathers. For they have deadened their natural senses by bodily discomfort without any hope of prospective gain for their souls. They have literally repeated the old penance by setting out to walk with new boots and cotton socks and a ponderous knapsack. They have rushed over passes and up peaks in bad weather; or overtaxed their powers in a first tour: or they have perhaps never persevered long enough to be able to tread with ease a mountain-path, where the novice dares not lift his eyes from the ground, while his companion, some days or weeks more experienced, can enjoy at once the scenery and motion. No wonder that what is a delight to the wise is to them foolishness, and that they speedily renounce the mountains.
Such mountain-haters still find champions both in English and foreign modern literature. I shall not be tempted to take the late Canon Kingsley as an example, for his amusing attack on mountains[72] is in truth only a plea for flats, and in that light I heartily sympathise with it. Moreover Mr. Kingsley loved all nature so well that his cursing is of the most superficial and Balaamitic character, and the argument he puts in the mouth of his 'peevish friend' would invite mercy by its very feebleness.
A distinguished French critic will furnish us with a far more genuine example of the old school. M. Taine, travelling in the Pyrenees to write a book, experiences a difficulty the reverse of Mr. Kingsley's. Feeling that he ought, as a man of his time, to bless, he yet cannot refrain from cursing altogether. The antique modes of expression flow naturally from his pen; he is constantly reminding us of the once favourite theological view that the mountains are a disease of nature. His language at times resembles that of a medical student fresh from the hospitals and the dissecting-room. He sums up his impressions of the Pyrenees in the reflection that they are 'monstrous protuberances.' Here is a picture from Luchon! 'The slopes hang one over the other notched, dislocated, bleeding; the sharp ridges and fractures are yellow with miserable mosses, vegetable ulcers which defile the nakedness of the rocks with their leprous spots.'[73] This loathsome simile for mountain mosses pleases M. Taine so much that he never mentions them without repeating it. Take now a more general sketch.