e, the great Russian Verestchagin, whose pictures, alas! are now
buried somewhere in Russia. The Indian Services might do
something, and they have indeed produced one great painter of
Himalayan scenery, Colonel Tanner. But the Services are limited,
and it is to Europe that we must mainly look.

On the first expedition to Mount Everest it may be only possible to
send a photographer. But this will be a pioneering expedition to
open the way, at least, for the painter. And then we may have Mount
Everest pictured in all her varied and ever-varying moods, as I have,
from a distance, seen her for three most treasured months. Now
serene and majestic; now in a tumult of fury. Now rooted solid on
earth; now hung high in the azure. Now hard and material; now
ethereal as spirit. Now stern and austere--cold, and white, and grey;
now warm and radiant and of every most delicate hue. Now in one
aspect, now in its precisely opposite, but always sublime and
compelling; always pure and unspotted; and always pointing us
starward.

These are the pictures--either by painter or by poet--that we want.
And they can only be painted by one who has himself gone in
among the mountains, confronted them squarely, braced himself
against them, faced and overcome them--realised their greatness,
realised also that great as they are he is greater still.

And this that we want of the greatest natural feature of the Earth is
only typical of what this Society should require in regard to all
Earth's other features in order to make our Geography complete. As
men have pictured the loveliness of England, the fairness of France,
the brilliance of Greece, so we want them to picture the
spaciousness of Arabia, the luxuriance of Brazil, and the sublimity
of the Himalaya. For not till that has been done will our Geography
be complete. But when that has been accomplished and the quest for
Beauty is being pushed to the remotest lands and Earth's farthest
corners, even the British schoolboy will love his Geography, and our
science will have won its final triumph. At nothing less, then, than
the heart of the boy should our Society deign to aim.

AN ADDRESS TO THE UNION SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON,
DELIVERED ON MARCH 17, 1921.

You have been good enough to leave to me the choice of subject on
which to address you this evening, and I have chosen the subject
"Natural Beauty and Geography" because I have the honour to hold
at present the position of