and knowing that the moon is shining on its waters, through the town,
beneath the bridges, between pasture-lands and copses, up the still
mountain-girdled valleys to the ice-caves where the water springs.
There is nothing in all experience of travelling like this. We may
greet the Mediterranean at Marseilles with enthusiasm; on entering
Rome by the Porta del Popolo, we may reflect with pride that we
have reached the goal of our pilgrimage, and are at last among
world-shaking memories. But neither Rome nor the Riviera wins our
hearts like Switzerland. We do not lie awake in London thinking of
them; we do not long so intensely, as the year comes round, to revisit
them. Our affection is less a passion than that which we cherish for
Switzerland.

Why, then, is this? What, after all, is the love of the Alps, and when
and where did it begin? It is easier to ask these questions than to
answer them. The classic nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman
poets talk of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have been
more depressing to a courtier of Augustus than residence at Aosta,
even though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever
classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's
Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express
the aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable
wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The
Indian Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is true, attract the sight;
but it looks up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and
continues not intent on any object which is wanting in shades and
green to entertain it.' Addison and Gray had no better epithets than
'rugged,' 'horrid,' and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic
spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too
prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,--not to speak of what