the melting of the snow, rolled in a muddy stream within twenty
paces of us, and carried dust, sand, and stones along with it,
not without considerable noise. Behind us, a chain of
inaccessible rocks divided the place where we stood from that
part of the Alps which they call the Ice house.... Forests of
gloomy fir trees afforded us a melancholy shade on the right,
while on the left was a large wood of oak, beyond which the
torrent issued; and beneath, that vast body of water which the
lake forms in the bay of the Alps, parted us from the rich coast
of the Pays de Vaud, crowning the whole landscape with the top of
the majestic Jura.

Rousseau's influence upon feeling in general, and feeling for Nature
in particular, was an extraordinary one, widening and deepening at
once.

By his strong personal impulse he impelled it into more natural
paths, and at the same time he discovered the power of the mountains.

He brought to flower the germ which had lain dormant in Hellenism and
the Renaissance; and although his readers imbibed a sickly strain of
morbid sentimentality with this passion for the new region of
feeling, the total effect of his individuality and his idealism was
to intensify their love for Nature. His feelings woke the liveliest
echo, and it was not France alone who profited by the lessons he
taught.

He was no mountaineer himself, but he pointed out the way, and others
soon followed it. Saussure began his climbing in 1760, exploring the
Alps with the indomitable spirit of the discoverer and the
scientist's craving for truth. He ascended Mont Blanc in 1787, and
only too soon the valleys of Chamounix filled with tourists and
speculators. One of the first results of Rousseau's imposing
descriptions of scenery was to rouse the most ardent of French
romance writers, Bernardin de St Pierre; and his writings, especially
his beautiful pictures of the Ile de France, followed hard in the
wake of _La Nouvelle Heloise_.

In _Paul and Virginia_ vivid descriptions of Nature were interwoven
with an idyllic Robinson Crusoe romance:

Within this enclosure reigns the most profound silence. The
waters, the air, all the elements are at peace. Scarcely does the
echo repeat the whispers of the palm trees spreading their broad
leaves, the long points of which are gently agitated by the
winds. A soft light illumines the bottom of this deep valley, on
which th