The mediæval attitude towards mountains has already been discussed, and though we ventured to protest that love of the mountains was not quite so uncommon as is usually supposed, it must be freely admitted that the literature of the Middle Ages is comparatively barren in appreciation of mountain scenery. There were Protestants before Luther, and there were men such as Gesner and Petrarch before Rousseau; but the Middle Ages can scarcely rob Rousseau of the credit for transforming mountain worship from the cult of a minority into a comparatively fashionable creed. Rousseau’s own feeling for the mountains was none the less genuine because it was sometimes coloured by the desire to make the mountains echo his own philosophy of life. Rousseau, in this respect, set a fashion which his disciples were not slow to follow. The mountains as the home of the rugged Switzer could be made to preach edifying lay sermons on the value of liberty. Such sentiments were in tune with the spirit of revolt that culminated in the French Revolution. A certain Haller had sounded this note long before Rousseau began to write, in a poem on the Alps which, appearing in 1728, enjoyed considerable popularity. The author is not without a genuine appreciation for Alpine scenery, but he is far more occupied with his moral, the contrast between the unsophisticated life of the mountain peasant and the hyper-civilisation of the town. Throughout the writings of this school which Haller anticipated and Rousseau founded, we can trace an obvious connection between a love for the untutored freedom of the mountains and a hatred of existing social conditions.