but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and carpet
fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart, and free
enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the hand of
man.

It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful.
But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the
opinions of preceding periods.[1]

Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of
enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of
the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great
voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely
omitted from the maps.

To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and comfort
in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern mountain
rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent. Roads and
inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as weather, so
that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery and
anxiety, not pleasure. Knowledge of science, too, was only just
beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused;
glacier theories were undreamt of. The sight of a familiar scene near
the great snow-peaks roused men's admiration, because they were
surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the
idyllic mountain valleys.

Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480 and
1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the
Alps in his second account. He said[2]: