this time turned its mechanical system almost into a commonplace upon
our lips, and talks of that most perilous thing, the fortunes of a
fleet, as though it were a merely numerical and calculable thing! The
greatest of Armadas may set out and not return.

There is one experience of travel and of the physical realities of the
world which has been so widely repeated, and which men have so
constantly verified, that I could mention it as a last example of my
thesis without fear of misunderstanding. I mean the quality of a great
mountain.

To one that has never seen a mountain it may seem a full and a fine
piece of knowledge to be acquainted with its height in feet exactly, its
situation; nay, many would think themselves learned if they know no more
than its conventional name. But the thing itself! The curious sense of
its isolation from the common world, of its being the habitation of awe,
perhaps the brooding-place of a god!

I had seen many mountains, I had travelled in many places, and I had
read many particular details in the books--and so well noted them upon
the maps that I could have re-drawn the maps--concerning the Cerdagne.
None the less the sight of that wall of the Cerdagne, when first it
struck me, coming down the pass from Tourcarol, was as novel as though
all my life had been spent upon empty plains. By the map it was 9000
feet. It might have been 90,000! The wonderment as to what lay beyond,
the sense that it was a limit to known things, its savage intangibility,
its sheer silence! Nothing but the eye seeing could give one all those
things.

The old complain that the young will not take advice. But the wisest