Engadine and finally the Dolomites. A whole body of Englishmen mastered the secrets of snow-craft, and on their heels came another and even more adventurous band who developed a new school in crag-climbing.

The men who performed these feats began to describe them. The people who remained behind had an eager curiosity to know what these heights were like, and there was a continuous demand for the literature of Alpine adventure. Thus there grew up a new literature of the Alps, the literature of the Alpine Journal and its writers; the books of Whymper, Mummery, Forbes and Conway; and, perhaps most distinguished of all, the sketches of Tyndall and Leslie Stephen.1

What is the value of this literature as a contribution to English prose? Like the mountains with which it deals, it is strangely unequal. It rises to great heights and sinks to great depths. Its besetting sin is triviality. There is too much talk about the details of travel; about the meals, about the discomforts, about beds, about blisters, and above all, about fleas. If all the passages in Alpine literature written on these topics were collected together they would easily fill a volume bigger than the present.

But in spite of these grave defects, the English climbing literature of the last fifty years has given us some great passages. It can even be said, indeed, that mountain climbing has actually created writers. Men like Whymper and Mummery were not literary men. They were climbers who took to writing. But they had a great theme and a great experience. The mere greatness of the theme has made them conspicuous writers. They have been raised by the subject to a higher level. They have ascended with the mountains themselves to greater heights.

What then is this charm which has given a new quality to English prose literature? What is this theme that has made writers out of ordinary men, and has turned clay into porcelainthis theme able, in the words of Coleridge,

What is it?

'... To stay the morning star
In his steep course'

1 See pp. 45, 73, etc.

No one can really answer that question who has not himself penetrated the recesses of the great mountains. Who but he knows the secret of the dawn over the Alps, when the great rock mountains flush like molten bronze and the pale snows blush like the cheek of a maiden? Who but he has looked down from some mighty height and seen the thick clouds break far below, revealing through the open window of that breach some nestling valley far beneath-some little Alpine village by the side of its green Alp, or some wood of thick pines by the side of its mountain torrent-all far, far below him, as if in another world? Or who but he has witnessed the terror and majesty of the Alpine storm, when the very rocks seem to shake with the wind, and the lightning seems to laugh with the pride and glory of its power? These things cannot be really communicated. They are the unique possession of those who have experienced them. It is only very dimly that words can give to the outer world some distant glimpses of the glories that the eye has seen and the tongue is stumbling to tell.

If my readers want to know the secret of the Alpine literature, they must look to it there-in the Alps themselves. If they would really understand its charm they must rise in the dim dawn, long before the sun has left its bed. They must grope their way over mountain paths while the mountains glimmer through the growing light. Or they must return in the sunset with the sense of danger past and labour done. They must see the lights of heaven come out one by one in the pale blue sky above them. It is those experiences that give the secret of Alpine literature, and explain why, in spite of all their defects and failings, the Alpine writers have contributed to English literature so much that is noble and sublime.

HAROLD SPENDER.

P.S.-I wish to make grateful acknowledgment of the kind assistance I have received in collecting the material for this work from Mr. C. H. Wollaston, the Secretary of the Alpine Club, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, who has carefully revised all the proofs, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. C. E. Shea, Lady Llewellyn Smith, Mr.

Arnold Lunn, Sir E. T. Cook, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Mr. Frederic Sherwood, the Recorder of Worcester, and my father Dr. J. K. Spender of Bath.

I wish also to thank the various authors and publishers for their courtesy in the matter of copyright, as shown in detail in the

text.