rs who are
capable of making a pun on the top of Mont Blanc--and capable of nothing
more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with
poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in
their bosoms which they are perhaps too shamefaced to utter.

The fact is that that which gives its inexpressible charm to
mountaineering is the incessant series of exquisite natural scenes,
which are for the most part enjoyed by the mountaineer alone. This is, I
am aware, a round assertion; but I will try to support it by a few of
the visions which are recalled to me by these Oberland cliffs, and which
I have seen profoundly enjoyed by men who perhaps never mentioned them
again, and probably in describing their adventures scrupulously avoided
the danger of being sentimental.

Thus every traveller has occasionally done a sunrise, and a more
lamentable proceeding than the ordinary view of a sunrise can hardly be
imagined. You are cold, miserable, breakfastless; have risen shivering
from a warm bed, and in your heart long only to creep into bed again. To
the mountaineer all this is changed. He is beginning a day full of the
anticipation of a pleasant excitement. He has, perhaps, been waiting
anxiously for fine weather, to try conclusions with some huge giant not
yet scaled. He moves out with something of the feeling with which a
soldier goes to the assault of a fortress, but without the same
probability of coming home in fragments; the danger is trifling enough
to be merely exhilatory, and to give a pleasant tension to the nerves;
his muscles feel firm and springy, and his stomach--no small advantage
to the enjoyment of scenery--is in excellent order. He looks at the
sparkling stars with keen satisfaction, prepared to enjoy a fine sunrise
with all his faculties at their best, and with the added pleasure of a
good omen for his day's work. Then a huge dark mass begins to mould
itself slowly out of the darkness, the sky begins to form a background
of deep purple, against which the outline becomes gradually more
definite; one by one, the peaks catch the exquisite Alpine glow,
lighting up in rapid succession, like a vast illumination; and when at
last the steady sunlight settles upon them, and shows every rock and
glacier, without even a delicate film of mist to obscure them, he feels
his heart bound, and steps out gaily to the assault--just as the people
on the Rigi are giving thanks that the show is over a