An interesting early exception to this general statement is Petrarch’s description of his ascent of Mt. Ventoux. In a letter dated April 26, 1335 (Petrarca, “Lettere Famigliari,” I, 481), he tells how this mountain ever before his eyes, had been from childhood a temptation to him, and how he was finally stimulated to make the ascent by an account of the wide view gained by Philip of Macedon from one of the highest mountains in Thessaly. The most significant passage in this letter is that in which are strangely mingled Petrarch’s pleasure in the magnificent prospect and his ascetic fear of a consequent undue subordination of the soul of man. “At last I turned to the occasion of my expedition. The sinking sun and lengthening shadows admonished me that the hour of departure was at hand, and, as if started from sleep, I turned around and looked to the west. The Pyrenees--the eye could not reach so far, but I saw the mountains of Lyonnais distinctly, and the sea by Marseilles; the Rhone, too, was there before me. Observing these closely, now thinking on the things of earth, and again, as if I had done with the body, lifting my mind on high, it occurred to me to take out the copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions that I always kept with me; a little volume but of unlimited value and charm. And I call God to witness that the first words on which I cast mine eyes were these: ‘Men go to wonder at the heights of mountains, the ocean floods, rivers’ long courses, ocean’s immensity, the revolutions of the stars--and of themselves they have no care!’ My brother asked me what was the matter. I bade him not disturb me. I closed the book, angry with myself for not ceasing to admire things of earth, instead of remembering that the human soul is beyond comparison the subject for admiration. Once and again, as I descended, I gazed back, and the lofty summit of the mountain seemed to me scarcely a cubit high compared with the sublime dignity of man.” Translated and commented on by McLaughlin, “The Mediaeval Feeling for Nature.” See also Biese, “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls,” p. 151: “Und somit eröffnet uns dieser Brief, mit seiner Mischung reinen, modernen Naturgenusses und dogmatisch-asketischer Rückbesinnung, einen Blick in ein zwie-spältiges Herz eines an der Wende zweier Zeiten stehenden Menschen; es reagiert gleichsam der mittelalterliche Geist wider die aufkeimende moderne Empfindung.”