内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE-FIRST EDITION. A Passage in the fifty-third page of this book, referring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the reader's ear since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, and think it wrong to cancel what has once been thoughtfully said; but it must not so remain without a few added words. No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, and real reward, for all difficult work; and even were it otherwise, some experience of distinct peril, and the acquirement of habits of quick and calm action in its presence, are necessary elements, at some period of life, in the; formation of manly character. The blame of bribing j guides into danger is a singular accusation, in behalf of ' a people who have made mercenary soldiers of themselves for centuries, without any one's thinking of giving their fidelity better employment: though, indeed, the piece of work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, however useless, was no unwise one; and their lion of flawed molasse at Lucerne, worthless in point of art though it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much pay; and a better ornament to the old town than the Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade of those travellers who do not take guides into danger. The British public are however, at home, so innocent of ever buying their fellow creatures' lives, that we may justly expect them to be punctilious abroad They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many souls flit annually, choked in fire-damp and sea-sand, from economically watched shafts, and economically manned ships; nor see the fiery ghosts writhe up out of every scuttle- ful of cheap coals: nor ...