PEAKS AND PLEASANT PASTURES.* Mn. SCHUSTER is one of those
who have fallen heir to the blessing of Joseph as recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, and giies thanks " for the chief things of the ancient mountains and for the precious things of the lasting hills." Since fashion in mountaineering has set towards rock gymnastics there has been a decline in the literary value of Alpine records. The vintage of the Alpine Journal to-day is drier, perhaps, and lighter than of old.. Not that we desire the wandering psychologist in the hills, the connoisseur of emotions, the gentleman with "a melancholy delight in words." Ho is better left to manufacture his impressions in the lower valleys, for he would be a doubtful blessing on a rope. But the old race of mountaineers climbed as lustily and pioneered as bravely as their successors ; yet in their reports they made literature and we produce only topography. There may be something in the complaint, and Mr. Schuster is here to refute it. He ranks himself, indeed, humbly amongst the Philistines. He defends the "shutting of the door upon those Eesthetic emotions which we have not felt ourselves worthy to unbar." But he cannot forswear his gods. He writes like a scholar and a man of letters—too much, sometimes, for his pages are impregnated with quotations. He has given us the confession of faith of the true mountain lover who can exult without rhapsody and describe without rhetoric ; and if the Muses have forsaken their Alpine trails these delightful chapters should call them back again.
The spirit of the book is that of a chastened youth. Mr. Schuster is always professing middle .age and tabulating its consolations, but that is one of the privileges of the com- paratively young. True middle age is too solemn a thing to talk about. But the youthfulness is seasoned and wise. The climber is no more the "callow youth with coloured tops to his stockings who dallies with pretty bits of climbing and has a taste for carrying his own knapsack," but "the scarred and bearded veteran who appreciates the moral sup- port of the rope and plods obediently and unburdened after his veteran guide." The chief sign of middle age in the book is its common sense, for Mr. Schuster talks excellent good sense about the problems of the craft. He considers that moun- taineering by skilled mountaineers is not more dangerous than bunting in a fair country, with the addendum that difficult mountaineering for the unskilled is as dangerous as for a man, who has never learned to ride, to ride a vicious horse in a steeplechase, He refuses to make the sport too melodramatic or too prosaic ; there will always be risks, and without them mountaineering would become "nothing but a mere laborious and elaborate form of walking up a damp flight of stairs." Chastened youth—we prefer the term to middle age—discovers also that passes have their charm as well as peaks. Deep in every human heart, says Mr. Schuster, lie three desires ; to get to the top, to look round time. corner, and to get home to Inane' the
dinner. The callow beginner is absorbed by the first, veteran sets his mind loyally on all the three. Still compensation is given by time. Youth is an athlete, viewing all things in the terms of muscular skill, regarding a guide as part of the mechanism which leads to success and little more. Age is more of an observer, and sees the human being behind the expert. So we have from Mr. Schuster some delightful pages on guides—kindly, shrewd, and humorous, a fitting tribute to the finest "professionals ". that any sport can show. One last virtue in advancing experience is that the mountaineer escapes from the bondage of fashion. He no longer confines his efforts to the wrong way up very famous mountains. He is content to explore less-known fastnesses, where he can discover odd nooks and glens, and mountains which are not household words for the tourist clan. Without derogating from the. splendour of the Mummery chimney on the Grepon or the Brenva route on Mont Blanc, or the Zmutt ridge of
• (1) Peaks and Pleasant Pastures. By Claud Schuster. Oxford; at the Clarendon proem. [7s. 6d. net.]--(2) Oaford Mountaineering Essays. Edited by A. U. M. Luau. Loudon E. Arnold. [6x, nat..' the Matterhorn, he can see the merits of humbler altitudes. Mr. Schuster claims the vac of Autolycus, a "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." He is the true Alpine wanderer, making not ascents only but journeys, and finding in the process a wealth of beauty which the " centrist " is apt to miss. Who would not exchange now and then the dusty valleys and the thickly peopled alps of a Swiss August for some warm and secret dale where the peaks break down into Italy ?
The best of the chapters toll of little-known districts, chiefly in the Tarentaise and neighbourhood of the Monte della Disgrazia. Two take us to Dauphine, that land of stones and lavender, and the steepest ice which a man's axe ever encountered. Thence by a high-level route we travel to Chamonix; whore we moralize for a little in a garden. Others take us to the valleys of the Isere and the Are, the Doron and the Dora, to Mont Pourri and Grande Cease and Sassiere—the land between the black rock of Dauphine and the gleaming snows of Mont Blanc. These chapters are full of pleasant pictures of little-known inns and nights among the hay of remote chalets, of short cuts that proved wrong turnings and sudden descents from rainy peaks to sunlit meadows. The Tarentaise is a perplexing country to wander in, but one is never too remote from a bed, and there are contrasts enough to keep the mind happy. The last expedi- tions are in the Oberland, first a dismal picture of the torrid Diablerets, and then the satisfying snows of the Jungf ran and the Schreckhorn. Mr. Schuster has one of the chief merits of a chronicler of travel. His lightheartedness and enthusiasm are infectious, and his topographical zeal causes the reader to thumb Mr. New's excellent maps in order to identify places of which he hears for the first time. The style is highly mannered, and Perhaps he is too consistently classical in his reminiscences. Pan and old Sylvanus are almost as often present to his mind as to an eighteenth-century poet. But lie is never unpleasantly literary ; lie never has the air of girding his loins and saying, "Lo, let me describe a scene." His delicate pictures of weather and landscape fall naturally into place and haunt the memory. The whole book, with its freshness of observation, its sanity and cheerfulness, and its literary grace, stands out in modern mountaineering literature as a not unworthy successor of the classics of the past.
The Oaiford Mountaineering Essays belong to youth not yet chastened by time, youth which with all its modesty takes itself in full seriousness. The writers are for the most part a little burdened with a self-conscious style. They are much con- cerned with "basic principles," and after the fashion of young men would evolvefrom the mountains a far-reaching metaphysic of life. Butsince " basic principles " of this kind are apt to be few in number, the' writers are inclined to repeat themselves and be a little monotonous. It is all good, cultivated, thoughtful work, but it has been done better before ; and we like best the straightforward records of their mountain education afforded by the two Mr. Lunna. Especially in Mr. Arnold Lunn's " The Mountains of Youth" there speaks a grave and simple passion. Mr. Norman Young's " The Mountains in Greek Poetry" is an excellent essay where the burden of sound scholarship is lightly borne. We are glad that one writer— anonymous for prudential reasons—has been found to exalt the glories of roof-climbing at Oxford. It is a sport repugnant to the authorities, but educative for the young mountaineer ; and; being pursued in close proximity to society, it has moments of a peculiar drama which no aiguille ever yielded. The man who achieves a hard Dolomite traverse is at least spared the risk of catching the eye of a late- sitting tutor. We aro told that one Oxford Alpine Club meets in New College Hall, and another at irregular intervals on New College Hall. The society to which we owe this volume is different body, but it is not averse to comedy, as witness the motion by a member "to inhibit the Secretary of the Church Union from issuing a printed prayer for ' faith to remove mounteins.' " The essays collected here show little of the high, spirits of the Preface, but they are sincere and often eloquent testimonies to the glamour of the hills. The hills, as the authors claim, hold a special message for youth, and youth inay be pardoned for attempting to expound it. We look to these Oxford mountaineers to make the mountaineer- ing literature of the future.
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