aced by
perpendicular walls of rock, is the first thing which strikes everybody,
and is the whole essence and outcome of a vast quantity of poetical
description. Hence the first condition towards a due appreciation of
mountain scenery is that these qualities should be impressed upon the
imagination. The mere dry statement that a mountain is so many feet in
vertical height above the sea, and contains so many tons of granite, is
nothing. Mont Blanc, is about three miles high. What of that? Three
miles is an hour's walk for a lady--an eighteen-penny cab-fare--the
distance from Hyde Park Corner to the Bank--an express train could do it
in three minutes, or a racehorse in five. It is a measure which we have
learnt to despise, looking at it from a horizontal point of view; and
accordingly most persons, on seeing the Alps for the first time, guess
them to be higher, as measured in feet, than they really are. What,
indeed, is the use of giving measures in feet to any but the scientific
mind? Who cares whether the moon is 250,000 or 2,500,000 miles distant?
Mathematicians try to impress upon us that the distance of the fixed
stars is only expressible by a row of figures which stretches across a
page; suppose it stretched across two or across a dozen pages, should we
be any the wiser, or have, in the least degree, a clearer notion of the
superlative distances? We civilly say, "Dear me!" when the astronomer
looks to us for the appropriate stare, but we only say it with the
mouth; internally our remark is, "You might as well have multiplied by a
few more millions whilst you were about it." Even astronomers, though
not a specially imaginative race, feel the impotence of figures, and try
to give us some measure which the mind can grasp a little more
conveniently. They tell us about the cannon-ball which might have been
flying ever since the time of Adam, and not yet have reached the
heavenly body, or about the stars which may not yet have become visible,
though the light has been flying to us at a rate inconceivable by the
mind for an inconceivable number of years; and they succeed in producing
a bewildering and giddy sensation, although the numbers are too vast to
admit of any accurate apprehension.

We feel a similar need in the case of mountains. Besides the bare
statement of figures, it is necessary to have some means for grasping
the meaning of the figures. The bare tens and thousands must be clothed
with some concrete images. T