“At Chamounix,” he writes, “I have seen persons of every party in the state, who imagined that they loathed each other, nevertheless treating one another with courtesy, and even walking together. Returning to Geneva, and encountering the reproaches of their various friends, they merely answered in their defence, ‘Go, as we have gone, to the Montanvert, and take our share of the pure air that is to be breathed there; look thence at the unfamiliar beauties of Nature; contemplate from that terrace the greatness of natural objects and the littleness of man; and you will no longer be astonished that Nature has enabled us to subdue our passions.’ It is, in fact, the mountains that many men have to thank for their reconciliation with their fellows, and with the human race; and it is there that the rulers of the world and the heads of the nations ought to hold their meetings. Raised thus above the arena of passions and petty interests, and placed more immediately under the influence of Divine inspiration, one would see them descend from these mountains, each like a new Moses bringing with them codes of law based upon equity and justice.” This is fine writing with a vengeance, just as Ruskin’s greatest passages are fine writing. Before we take our leave of Bourrit, let us see the precentor of the cathedral exhorting a company of guides with sacerdotal dignity. One is irresistibly reminded of Japan, where mountaineering and sacrificial rites go hand in hand-- “The Historian of the Alps, in rendering them this justice in the presence of a great throng of people, seized the opportunity of exhorting the new guides to observe the virtues proper to their state in life. ‘Put yourselves,’ he said to them, ‘in the place of the strangers, who come from the most distant lands to admire the marvels of Nature under these wild and savage aspects; and justify the confidence which they repose in you. You have learnt the great part which these magnificent objects of our contemplation play in the organisation of the world; and, in pointing out their various phenomena to their astonished eyes, you will rejoice to see people raise their thoughts to the omnipotence of the Great Being who created them.’ The speaker was profoundly moved by the ideas with which the subject inspired him, and it was impossible for his listeners not to share in his emotion.”