We are, it
seems, overgrown schoolboys, who, like other schoolboys, enjoy being in
dirt, and danger, and mischief, and have as much sensibility for natural
beauty as the mountain mules. And against this, as a more serious
complaint, I wish to make my feeble protest, in order that my
lamentations on quitting the profession may not seem unworthy of a
thinking being.
Let me try to recall some of the impressions which mountaineering has
left with me, and see whether they throw any light upon the subject. As
I gaze at the huge cliffs where I may no longer wander, I find
innumerable recollections arise--some of them dim, as though belonging
to a past existence; and some so brilliant that I can scarcely realise
my exclusion from the scenes to which they belong. I am standing at the
foot of what, to my mind, is the most glorious of all Alpine
wonders--the huge Oberland precipice, on the slopes of the Faulhorn or
the Wengern Alp. Innumerable tourists have done all that tourists can do
to cocknify (if that is the right derivative from cockney) the scenery;
but, like the Pyramids or a Gothic cathedral, it throws off the taint of
vulgarity by its imperishable majesty.
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