The bases of the
mountains are immersed in a deluge of cockneyism--fortunately a shallow
deluge--whilst their summits rise high into the bracing air, where
everything is pure and poetical.
The difference which I have thus endeavoured to indicate is more or
less traceable in a wider sense. The mountains are exquisitely
beautiful, indeed, from whatever points of view we contemplate them; and
the mountaineer would lose much if he never saw the beauties of the
lower valleys, of pasturages deep in flowers, and dark pine-forests with
the summits shining from far off between the stems. Only, as it seems to
me, he has the exclusive prerogative of thoroughly enjoying one--and
that the most characteristic, though by no means only, element of the
scenery. There may be a very good dinner spread before twenty people;
but if nineteen of them were teetotalers, and the twentieth drank his
wine like a man, he would be the only one to do it full justice; the
others might praise the meat or the fruits, but he would alone enjoy the
champagne; and in the great feast which Nature spreads before us (a
stock metaphor, which emboldens me to make the comparison), the high
mountain scenery acts the part of the champagne.
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