XI THE DREAD OF NATURE 223

extreme, and the judicial records of the Middle
Ages furnish only too conclusive evidence that
they were, indeed, a terrible reaUty. There
was a widespread idea, believed in, for
instance, by James the First, that by
melting Uttle wax images on which a
person's name was written, the person in-
dicated might be himself destroyed. The
hght of science has now happily dispelled
these fearful nightmares.
Moimtain scenery, now our delight and
admiration, filled our forefathers with gloom,
or even horror. Leonardo Bruni, for example,
relating his crossing of the Arlberg, exclaims,
''A horror and awe seize me when I observe
these fearful masses of mountains and rocks,
and even now I cannot think of them without
dread." ^ Master John de Bremble, monk of
Christchurch, Canterbury, who crossed the
Great Saint Bernard, on his way to Rome, in
1188, was moved not only to horror, but
to prayer. ''Lord, I said'' — so he wrote to
Sub-Prior Geoffrey — ''restore me to my
brethren that I may tell them that they come

* Quoted by Leslie Stephen in The Playground of Europe.
224 PEACE AND HAPPINESS chap.
not to this place of torment." Leslie Stephen,
in his work on the Alps, gives many other
striking illustrations.
Moreover, even when there was no actual
dread, there was often an entire want of
appreciation. The old masters knew Uttle
of landscape. Their flowers and trees, and
even their mountains, are more or less
conventional.
