The Alps

Rousseau is usually credited with the discovery that mountains are not intrinsically hideous. Long before his day, isolated men had loved the mountains, but these men were eccentrics. They founded no school; and Rousseau was certainly the first to popularise mountains and to transform the cult of hill worship into a fashionable creed. Nonetheless, we must guard against the error of supposing that mountain love was confined to the few men who have left behind them literary evidence of their ...