The President had for thirty-four years been a "devoted son" of that University. Whatever rival claims there may have been to predominance, it is a fact that the first proposal for the formation of an Alpine Club emanated from William Mathews to F. J. A. Hort, both high up in the highest honors of Cambridge, the latter during the years 1850 and 1851 carrying off three out of the four Honour Triposes and coming out as Third Classic. In the formation and detail, F. Vaughan Hawkins and Dr. Lightfoot took an active part. Both were Senior Classics and Wranglers.
According to an article devoted to the Jubilee Celebration, appearing in the Graphic of December 14th, the Club was founded at a meeting at Ashley's Hotel on 22nd December, 1857. The articles goes on to say: "It was greeted with a storm of ridicule. The press pronounced it to be an association of suicidal monomaniacs, and Ruskin uttered a wild protest in which he declared that 'the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again with shrieks of delight.' But the storm soon blew over. Ruskin himself found that men might climb mountains without vulgarising them, and gave practical effect to his recantations by himself joining the Club."
From an original membership of thirty-one, it has gradually advanced in the fifty years of its life to some seven hundred. The membership is small compared to that of other clubs since formed, whose members are in the thousands, one of them, the German-Austrian, boasting of more than seventy thousand members. The reason for the comparatively small membership is due to the very high standard set and maintained by the Club, and the great care with which applicants for membership have been selected. This fact is well illustrated by the names of now famous men which appear
