r side, will instantly give me intense
delight because the shadow, the hope of the hills is in them." Both
lovers showed the same disdain of the mere climber. Javelle's Alpine
memories record his sense of aloofness from the general type of member
of the Alpine Club.

Whilst Ruskin's communion with the mountains found an outlet in prolific
literary output, and a system of art and ethics destined to leaven the
mass of human thought, the infinitude and grandeur of mountain scenery
had a dispersive effect on Javelle's mind. I can so well understand him.
He wandered over the chain of Valais--my mountains (each worshipper has
his special idols)--the Dent du Midi, the Vaudois Alps, and the Bernese
Oberland in search of beauty, more and more beauty. He ascended peak
after peak, attracted by an irresistible force, permeated by a desire
for new points of view, forgetful of the haunts of men.

And when, between times, Javelle tried to write a book, a great and
learned book on rhetoric, he could never finish it. For seven years he
laboured at preparing it, collecting notes, seeking corroborative
evidence. His Alpine climbing had taught him the elusiveness of isolated
peaks of knowledge. He saw that rhetoric is dependent on aesthetics and
aesthetics on psychology and sociology and philosophy, and all on
anthropology; that there are no frontiers and no finality and no
knowledge which is not relative and imperfect. It was all a question of
different tops and points of view, and so the book was not finished when
he died, still in search of the super-mountain of the widest and
largest view, still crying out his motto, "Onward, higher and higher
still! You must reach the top!"

Beware, O fellow mountaineers, of such ambitions. For that way madness
lies. I know the lure and the shock. As I write this I sit gazing across
the valley upon the mountain on my right. It is known by the name of the
Black Head; it has a sombre shape, it has never been known to smile. It
towers above me with a cone-shaped top, a figure of might and dominion.
For a dozen years it has checked my tendency to idealistic flights by
reminding me of the inexorable laws of Nature. It is true it does not
conceal the smiling glacier in front of me, with its ceaseless play of
light and shadow, colour and form, but it arrests the fancy by its
massive immovability. And yet, when I leave my little abode of bliss and
wander forth into the heights above (ah, humiliation that th