beauty.

Brockes to some extent did. He described the Harz Mountains in the
Fourth Book of his _Earthly Pleasure in God (Irdisches Vergüngen in
Gott)_; and in his _Observations on the Blankenburg Marble_ he said:
'In many parts the rough mountain heights were monstrously beautiful,
their size delights and appals us'; and wound up a discussion of wild
scenery in contrast to cultivated with: 'Ponder this with joy and
reverence, my soul. The mountain heights wild and beautiful shew us a
picture of earthly disorder.'[7] It was very long before expressions
of horror and fear entirely disappeared from descriptions of the
Alps. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_ we read: 'We bid adieu
to France and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty
and rocky mountains. We had left behind us a blooming Spring, which
enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we
passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.... Every object
which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' Savoy is 'one
of the worst countries under Heaven.'

Addison,[8] on the other hand, wrote of the Alps from Ripaille: 'It
was the pleasantest voyage in the world to follow the windings of
this river Inn through such a variety of pleasing scenes as the
course of it naturally led us. We had sometimes on each side of us a
vast extent of naked rocks and mountains, broken into a thousand
irregular steps and precipices ... but, as the materials of a fine
landscape are not always the most profitable to the owner of them, we
met with but little corn or pasturage,' etc. Lady Mary Wortley[9]
Montagu wrote from Lyons, Sept. 25, 1718: 'The prodigious aspect of
mountains covered with eternal snow, clouds hanging far below our
feet, and the vast cascades tumbling down the rocks with a confused