As I have said, when I first quoted these sentences I did not believe one word of them. It is true that then I was younger and more enthusiastic; moreover, the Alps were new to me, and I was still able to appreciate to the full the beauties of that region of streams, glaciers, and snow peaks: then the sun still shone, then the morning and the evening, arrayed in their coat of many colours, called either to action or bid a cheerful good-night, and even then the fleeting clouds, flung abroad like 'banners on the outer wall,' would often make me stop and watch, till the mists dissolved into thin air left the high battlements of the mighty mountains once more clear against the blue sky. Yes! although I quoted these paragraphs, yet at that period, to me it was impious to question the sway of the monarchs of the earth. Degraded mountains, taint of staleness, waters of oblivion, Jungfraus overwhelmed, a truly depressing picture! but when one comes to examine into the real truth of the matter, the fact remains that the mountains are still there, and really after all in much the same condition as they were fifty years ago. Of course one must admit that many parts of Switzerland below the snow line and some infinitesimal bits higher up possibly have been degraded, but not by a natural process. This degradation is the work of the animal, Man; and it is difficult to say why he alone of all the inhabitants of this world, wherever he sets himself down, should always besmirch and befoul the face of Nature. Some literary and inquiring spirit should write a monograph on the subject. [Illustration: _A Crevasse on Mont Blanc._] What sight is more depressing than the gaunt, soot-begrimed trees that struggle for a pitiful existence around our centres of so-called civilisation? Where can a more squalid picture be either seen or imagined than a back slum in one of our manufacturing towns where the teeming millions are born, bred, and die? The inhabitants of a London back street never see this earth as Nature made it, beyond perhaps occasionally a green field. They know nothing of the great face of the world. What do mountains, streams, pinewoods, and lakes ruffled by the wind, mean to them? they only have seen the lower Thames and its mud banks. Expanses of heather moorland where the birds, the breezes, and the many summer scents wander to and fro: probably their nearest approach to these is Hampstead heath and oranges! The nations of the East can teach Western civilisation several things, and the people of the Staffordshire Black Country would not lose were they to copy some of the methods of living in Japan.