PREFACE [TO THE SECOND EDITION: 1865] 1. A PASSAGE in the eighty-fifth page of this book,' referring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the reader's ear, since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, and think it wrong to cancel what has once been thoughtfully said; but it must not so remain without a few added words. No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, and real reward, for all difficult work; and even were it otherwise, some experience of distinct peril, and the acquirement of habits of quick and calm action in its presence, are necessary elements, at some period of life, in the formation of manly character.2 The blame of bribing guides into danger is a 1 [Of the first edition; now, § 35: below, p. 90. The first edition was published in June 1865. On July 14 the first ascent of the Matterhorn was made by Lord Francis Douglas, Mr. D. Hadow, Mr. Charles Hudson, and Mr. Edward Whymper, accompanied by the guides Michel Croz, Peter Taugwalder père, and Peter Taugwalder fils. On the descent there was a slip, and the whole party except Mr. Whymper and the two Taugwalders perished. Mr. Whymper gave an account of the accident in the Times, August 8, 1865, and afterwards in chapter xx. of his The Ascent of the Matterhorn (1880). For references to other passages in which Ruskin discusses Alpine climbing, see the Introduction, above, p. 1v.] 2 [There is a passage on this subject in one of Ruskin's letters to his father (written at Chamouni, October 3, 1863) : "That question of the moral effect of danger is a very curious one; but this I know and find, practically, that if you come to a dangerous place, and turn back from it, though it may have been perfectly right and wise to do so, still your character has suffered some slight deterioration; you are to that extent weaker, more lifeless, more effeminate, more liable to passion and error in future; whereas if you go through the danger, though it may have been apparently wrong and foolish to encounter it, singular accusation, in behalf of a people who have made mercenary soldiers of themselves for centuries, without any one's thinking of giving their fidelity better employment: though, indeed, the piece of work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, however useless, was no unwise one; and their lion of flawed molasse at Lucerne,' worthless in point of art though it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much pay; and a better ornament to the old town than the Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade of those travellers who do not take guides into danger. The British public are, however, at home, so innocent of ever buying their fellow-creatures' lives, that we may justly expect them to be punctilious abroad! They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many souls flit annually, choked in firedamp and sea-sand, from economically watched shafts, and economically manned ships; nor see the fiery ghosts writhe up out of every scuttlefull of cheap coals: nor count how many threads of girlish life are cut off and woven annually by painted Fates, into breadths of ball-dresses; or soaked away, like rotten hemp-fibre, in the inlet of Cocytus which overflows the Grassmarket where flesh is as grass. We need not, it seems to me, loudly blame any one for paying a guide to take a brave walk with him. Therefore, gentlemen of the Alpine Club, as much danger as you care to face, by all means; but, if it please you, not so much talk of it. The real ground for reprehension of Alpine climbing is that, with less cause, it excites more vanity than any other athletic skill. A good horseman knows what it has cost to 2 you come out of the encounter a stronger and better man, fitter for every sort of work and trial, and nothing but danger produces this effect-it being apparently the intention of God that men should learn early to value their life lightly in comparison with its work and duty; and to scorn death, yet never despising life, so as not to care whether they endangered it or not. It is only those who do value their lives who can feel the power and force of danger, and its strengthening effect. If you don't value your life, you are a fool, and danger ceases to be danger to you then."] 1 [For a description of the "Lion" monument to the Swiss who fell in defending the King of France in 1790, see Vol. I. pp. 252, 256. For the "Schweizerhof quay" at Lucerne, Vol. VI. pp. 32, 456.] [1 Peter i. 24, quoting Isaiah xl. 6.] make him one; everybody else knows it too, and knows that he is one; he need not ride at a fence merely to show his seat. But credit for practice in climbing can only be claimed after success, which, though perhaps accidental and unmerited, must yet be attained at all risks, or the shame of defeat borne with no evidence of the difficulties encountered. At this particular period, also, the distinction obtainable by first conquest of a peak is as tempting to a traveller as the discovery of a new element to a chemist, or of a new species to a naturalist. Vanity is never so keenly excited as by competitions which involve chance; the course of science is continually arrested, and its nomenclature fatally confused, by the eagerness of even wise and able men to establish their priority in an unimportant discovery, or obtain vested right to a syllable in a deformed word; and many an otherwise sensible person will risk his life for the sake of a line in future guide-books, to the effect that "the -horn was first ascended by Mr. X. in "the year ;-never reflecting that of all the lines in the page, the one he has thus wrought for will be precisely the least interesting to the reader. 2. It is not therefore strange, however much to be regretted, that while no gentleman boasts in other cases of his sagacity or his courage-while no good soldier talks of the charge he led, nor any good sailor of the helm he held, -every man among the Alps seems to lose his senses and modesty with the fall of the barometer, and returns from his Nephelo-coccygia' brandishing his ice-axe in everybody's face. Whatever the Alpine Club have done, or may yet accomplish, in a sincere thirst for mountain knowledge, and in happy sense of youthful strength and play of animal spirit, they have done, and will do, wisely and well; but whatever they are urged to by mere sting of competition and itch of praise, they will do, as all vain things must be done for 1 [On this subject, compare Vol. XI. pp. 71-72; Vol. XVI. p. 374 n.; and Eagle's Nest, $$ 65-66, 74.] [For cloud-cuckoo-town, see Aristophanes' Birds, 819, etc.] |