hysical energy, but a strange
rousing of all their mental faculties. Prosaic, they become
poetical--the poetry may be unutterable, but it is there; commonplace,
they become eccentric; severely practical, they become dreamers and
loiterers upon the hillside. The sea, the wood, the meadow cannot
compete with the mountain in egging on the mind of man to incredible
efforts of expression. The songs, the rhapsodies, the poems, the
aesthetic ravings of mountain worshippers have a dionysian flavour which
no other scenery can impart.

Yesterday I left the turmoil of a conference in Geneva and reached home
amongst my delectable mountains. I took train for the foot of the hills
and climbed for many hours through drifts of snow. This morning I have
been deliciously mad. First I greeted the sun from my open chalet window
as it rose over the range on my left and lit up the great glacier before
me, throwing the distant hills into a glorious dream-world of blue and
purple. Then I plunged into the huge drifts of clean snow which the
wind had piled up outside my door. I laughed with joy as I breathed the
pure air, laden with the scent of pines and the diamond-dust of snow. I
never was more alive, the earth was never more beautiful, the heavens
were never nearer than they are to-day. Who says we are prisoners of
darkness? Who says we are puppets of the devil? Who says God must only
be worshipped in creeds and churches? Here are the glories of the
mountains, beauty divine, peace perfect, power unfathomable, love
inexhaustible, a never failing source of hope and light for our
struggling human race. I am vaguely aware of the unreasonableness of my
delirium of mountain joy, but I revel in it. And I sing with Sir Lewis
Morris--

More it is than ease,
Palace and pomp, honours and luxuries,
To have seen white presences upon the hills,
To have heard the voices of the eternal gods.

The emotions engendered by mountain scenery defy analysis. They may be
classified and labelled, but not explained. I turn to my library of
books by mountain-lovers--climbers, artists, poets, scientists. Though
we are solitaries in our communion with the Deity, though we worship in
great spaces of solitude and silence and seek rejuvenescence in utter
human loneliness, we do not despise counsels of sympathy and approval.
The strife rewarded, the ascent accomplished, we are profoundly grateful
for the yodel of human fellowship. And--let me whispe