Et cet air net et sain, propre à l'esprit vital.[112]
These three have been entirely overlooked hitherto; the only person of this period whom the modern mountaineer is told to claim as his spiritual brother is the botanist Conrad Gesner; but in claiming him they claim too much—for themselves. It is true that Gesner does write[113] that he never lets a year go by without climbing one or more of the Alps for exercise and pleasure as well as for botany; and that "whoever does not consider towering mountains preëminently worthy of more than ordinary attention is, to my mind, an enemy of Nature." But he goes on to show that the Alps meant far more to him than this much would prove. He looked on them as an epitome of all Nature's habits and experiments, the key to all Nature's secrets, to geology in the fullest sense of the word, structural, historical, dynamical; and that to a greater extent than is apparent at first sight, inasmuch as problems now treated as solved then belonged to dreamland and problems which seemed soluble there if anywhere are now known to be better studied elsewhere; the internal temperature of the earth, for instance, since it was not recognized in Gesner's day that there was any difference in kind between mountains and volcanoes.
The attitude of the average man of Gesner's time towards the Alps, however, is but the most striking instance of a general attitude towards Nature which circumstances at that time enforced and which different circumstances have since abolished. Further, of all classes of men, it was the tourists who were most oppressed by the circumstances of the past, and it is the tourists who get the greatest benefits from the changed circumstances of to-day. Further still, the difference was, and is, most noticeable by the tourist when on the road. In other words, the absence of enjoyment of the sterner aspects of Nature was the result of their having far more of Nature than an average man can stand. The growth of the size of towns has, so to speak, set a premium on Nature, just as it has, during the past century, created the custom of taking annual holidays; while the successive minimising of the dangers, the discomforts, and of so many of the lesser difficulties of travel has provided the traveller with contrast where once upon a time was none, and leaves him free to find pleasure (sometimes, perhaps, forces him to look for it to avoid being bored), where in 1600 all spelt pain and foreboding. This difference of sentiment culminated then, as it culminates now, when the tourist found himself among the Alps. There, above other places, were his faculties narrowed by fear and what remained of them wholly concentrated on self-preservation, until enjoyment was out of the question.
As to the change of attitude, it is usually credited to Rousseau, but was in progress before his influence began to be felt;[114] and if the subsequent development of the idea is considered, the credit must surely be shared by Napoleon, as to whose greatness there is no more conclusive evidence than that of his Alpine roads. Before these were carried out, men considered themselves at the mercy of the Alps; he first, and he alone, put the Alps at the service of men, and in so doing set free men's sense of beauty when in their midst.
But here, as always when writing about the prevalence or absence of a point of view, some reminder should be added as to the effect of literary conventions in exaggerating both the one and the other; that is to say, that in the former case it will frequently be expressed when it is little felt, and in the latter it will frequently be felt when not expressed. Even as to that binding of the faculties just alluded to, there is the very definite exception of the Infanta, who was not too preoccupied to ask questions, thereby learning that that peak had not been bare of snow for four hundred years and that this pinnacle was solid emerald; being considered inaccessible, cannon had not long before been brought up to shoot bits off, but without success.
Nevertheless, their turn of mind as regards Nature in general needs some other illustration than from negative evidence alone, or, among positive evidence, from so exceptional a feature as mountain scenery. This may be best taken from their use of the word "desert." A typical instance is in a sentence from Peter Mundy, "the way being faire and plaine, though desert and full of woods." Six times in "As You Like It" is the forest of Arden termed a desert:—
... this desert inaccessible
Under the shade of melancholy boughs.
"Desert" to them meant deserted by men, and through forests they passed, as often as not, sword in hand. To quote St. Amant's "Polonaise" again:—