Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
usefulness of mountains. Mountains were recognized as being valuable as wildlife pre-
serves, as sources of minerals, and as a means of converting salt water to fresh (Rees
1975a). But mountains were still not generally appreciated for their beauty. The wild
disarray of mountains and their utter lack of symmetry and proportion were difficult for
the early modern mind to accept. Mountains represented confusion, and were quite un-
like the order and uniformity these thinkers sought in the natural world. Their ideals
were the classical ones of order, reason, and restraint. Yet, appalled as they were at
these “warts, wens, blisters, and imposthumes” on the fair face of the Earth, they were
also profoundly impressed by the vastness and enormity of mountains. This is well ex-
pressed in Burnet's The Sacred Theory of the Earth:
The greatest objects of nature are, methinks, the most pleasing to behold; . . .
there is nothing that I look upon with more pleasure than the wide sea and the
mountains of earth. There is something august and stately in the air to these
things, that inspires the mind with great thoughts and passions; we do naturally,
upon such occasions, think of God and his greatness: And whatsoever hath but
the shadow and appearance of the infinite, as all things have that are too big for
our comprehension, they fill and overbear the mind with their excess and cast it
into a pleasing kind of stupor and admiration. Still. . . although we justly admire
its greatness, we cannot at all admire its beauty or elegancy for 'tis as deformed
and irregular as it is great, (NICOLSON 1959: 214-215)
The feelings of “delightful horror” and “terrible joy” expressed by Burnet and his
contemporaries are the first signs of the romantic enthusiasm that has typified
European attitudes toward mountains since the eighteenth century (Mathieu 2011). In
1732, Albrecht Haller published Die Alpen, a topic of poems in praise of the Alps and
their inhabitants which became something of a best-seller in Europe. The journals and
letters of another poet, Thomas Gray, describing his tour of the Alps in 1739, evoked
a similar response in England. The most influential writer of all was Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (Hyde 1917; Noyce 1950). In his La Nouvelle Helo'ise, published in 1759, he
enthuses:
The nearer I came to Switzerland, the more were my feelings moved. The mo-
ment when from the heights of Jura I descried the Lake of Geneva was a mo-
ment of ecstasy and rapture. The sight of my country, that so-beloved country,
where torrents of pleasure had overwhelmed my heart, the wholesome, pure air
of the Alps; the soft air of home, sweeter than the perfumes of the East; this rich
and fertile soil; this unrivaled landscape, the most beautiful that human eye has
ever seen, this charming spot of which I had never beheld the like in my journey;
the sight of a happy and free people; the softness of the season; the gentleness
of the climate; a thousand delicious memories that recalled all the emotions I
had felt,—all these things threw me into transports that I cannot describe, (PERRY
1879: 305)
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