UC-NRLF 
 
 
 ^"" 
 
 
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University of California. 
 
 FROM THK LIBRARY OK 
 
 i) R . F R A N C I S L 1 E B E R , 
 
 Professor of History and Ln\v in Columbia College, New York. 
 
 THK GIFT OF 
 
 MICHAEL REESE, 
 
 Of Sati Francisco. 
 
 1ST 3. 
 
THE PILGRIM 
 
 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 OF THE JUNGFRAU ALP. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE B. CHEEVER, U.D. 
 
 And when I grieve, O rather let it be 
 
 That I whom Nature taught to sit with her, 
 
 On her proud mountains, by her rolling sea ; 
 
 Who, when the winds are up, with mighty stir 
 
 Of woods and waters feel the quickening spur 
 
 To my strong spirit ; who, as mine own child, 
 
 Do love the flower, and in the ragged bur 
 
 A beauty see ; that I this mother mild 
 
 Should leave, and go with care and passions fierce and wild. 
 
 DANA 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 WILEY & PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 
 
 1846. 
 
ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 
 
 WILEY & PUTNAM, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. 
 
 R. CRAIQHEAD'B Power Press, 
 112 Fulton Street 
 
 T. B. SMITH, Stereotyper, 
 216 William Street 
 
RICHARD H. DANA, ESQ., 
 
 THE POET OF " DAYBREAK," 
 THIS VOLUME IS MOST RESPECTFULLY 
 
 AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 
 
 BY HIS GRATEFUL FRIEND, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I WISH all my readers a merry Christmas and a happy 
 New Year. May their holidays be graced with good 
 cheer, and what is infinitely better, may the grace of Him, 
 whose love gives us our true holidays, make every heart a 
 temple of gratitude and holy joy. A Pilgrim may wander 
 all over the earth, and find no spot in the world, where men 
 are~Tx)und to God by so many ties of mercy, as we are in 
 our own dear native country, or where old and young, 
 rich and poor, have so much cause for heartfelt rejoicing. 
 
 Therefore, an American, wherever he goes in the world, 
 should go with the feeling that his own country is the best 
 in the world. Not as a proud feeling, let him carry it, but 
 a gentle one, a quiet feeling behind all other moods and 
 varieties of thought, like the sense of domestic happiness, 
 which makes a man sure that his own home is the sweetest 
 of all homes. So, wherever an American goes, the image 
 of his country, like a lake among the mountains, should, as 
 a mirror, receive and reflect the world's surrounding im- 
 agery. He should see all other countries in the light of 
 his own. 
 
 The first time I left America for Europe, the last word 
 said to me by Mr. Dana (to whom I have taken the liberty 
 of inscribing this volume, though I doubt not there are 
 some things in it which will displease him), was this : See 
 
via' PREFACE. 
 
 all that you can see. A good, rule for a traveller, to whom 
 things that he has neglected seeing, always seem very im- 
 portant to him after he has got beyond their reach, though 
 while he was by them they seemed unimportant. But a 
 man should not look upon external shows or ostentations 
 merely, but at men's habits of thought and action, as they 
 have grown in the atmosphere of surrounding institutions. 
 So Mr. Dana would doubtless add to his advice the maxim 
 that a man should say just what he thinks of what he sees, 
 and not be frightened by the weird sisters of criticism. 
 Among all classes there will be found here and there a 
 frank, free, gentle-hearted critic, with the milk of human 
 kindness and indulgence for another's prejudices ; though 
 there be some, who will accuse a man of bigotry, when- 
 ever he says anything that does not square exactly with 
 their own religious views. But if a man tries to please 
 everybody, there is a fable waiting for him, of which it is 
 a sorry thing to experience the moral, instead of being 
 warned by it. We do love the good old New England 
 privilege of speaking one's mind. 
 
 As this book of the Jungfrau will probably be bound up, 
 if any think it worthy of a binding, with the other of Mont 
 Blanc, I may say of both, that if I had been intending to 
 make a regular book of travel, with statistical information, 
 political speculation, records of men's Babel-towers, and 
 - all the ambitious shows of cities, I should have made a 
 very different work indeed. But there are so many more 
 books in the world of that sort, than of this pilgrimage 
 kind, that I have preferred to go quietly, as far as possible, 
 hand in hand with Nature, finding quiet lessons. So, if 
 you choose, you may call the book a collection of Sea- 
 weed ; and if there were a single page into which there 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 had drifted something worthy of preservation, according 
 to that fine poem of Longfellow, I should be very glad ; 
 anything, whether from my own mind, or the minds of 
 others, that otherwise would still have floated at random. 
 There are many such things ungathered, for the waves are 
 always detaching them from the hidden reefs of thought in 
 our immortal being, and tossing them over the ocean. 
 
 " Ever drifting, drifting, drifting, 
 
 On the shifting 
 Currents of the restless heart ; 
 Till at length in books recorded, 
 
 They, like hoarded 
 Household words, no more depart." 
 
 The reader will find, in our two pilgrimages, a rehearsal, 
 if I may so speak, of most of the noted passes of Switzer- 
 land, and of the wonders of some, that are not usually 
 threaded by travellers. We have passed amidst the mag- 
 nificence and sublimity of Chamouny in the face of Mont 
 Blanc, have crossed the Col de Balme with its sights of 
 glory, and the pass of the Tete Noire, with the hospitable 
 Grand St. Bernard, the sunset splendors of the Vale of 
 Courmayeur, the stormy Col de Bonhomme, and the glit- 
 tering icebergs of the Allee Blanche. Now we climb the 
 wondrous Gemmi, and in the face of the Jungfrau march 
 across the sublime pass of the Wengern Alp, by the 
 thunder of the Avalanches, then over the Grand Scheideck, 
 the gloomy and terrible Grimsel, the pass of the Furca, the 
 romantic St. Gothard, the sky-gazing brow of the Righi, 
 the Wallenstadt passes, and last and grandest of all, the 
 amazing pass of the Splugen. And as we go, we visit the 
 great glaciers and cataracts, shining and roaring, and the 
 infant cradles of some of the largest rivers in Europe, and 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 the most romantic lakes in the world, and many a won- 
 drous scene besides. We go moralizing, all the way, 
 not at all unwilling to be accused, sometimes, of discourses 
 upon our icy texts, and wishing to make a volume more 
 of thoughts than things. I beg those who do not like them, 
 to remember that there may be those also, who will think 
 they are the best parts of the book. 
 
 I somewhat regret not having incorporated into this 
 volume my early visit to Italy through the Pass of the 
 Simplon, but this deficiency will be more than made up in 
 the excellent book of Mr. Headley on the Alps and Rhine, 
 to which I heartily commend the reader. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction. The serious side of travel 1 
 
 II. Lake Leman. Entrance on the Valley of the Rhine 7 
 
 III. Ecclesiastical despotism in the Valais. Measures of the 
 
 Jesuits 13 
 
 IV. Physical Plagues of the Canton du Valais and of Switzerland. 
 
 Hospital for the Cretins 18 
 
 V. Gorge of the Dala 24 
 
 VI. Elements of the landscape. Alpine Flowers. Jonathan 
 
 Edwards 27 
 
 VII. The Moon and the Mountains. Village of Leuk SO 
 
 VIII. Baths of Leuk 34 
 
 IX. Pass of the Gemmi. Trials of Faith 35 
 
 X. Pass of the Gemmi. Successive splendors of the view. . .. 39* 
 
 XI. Canton Berne. Scripture on the houses. Truth a good . 
 
 talisman 45 
 
 XII. Picturesque cottages. A picturesque language. Right and 
 
 unright innovation 48 
 
 XIII. Kandersteg. Frutigen. The Blumlis Alp. Lake and Vil- 
 
 lage of Thun 53 
 
 XIV. Thun to Interlachen. Interlachen to Lauterbrunnen. Bi- 
 
 ble in Schools 57 
 
 XV. Staubach Cascade and Vale of Lauterbrunnen 62 
 
 XVI. The Wengern Alp and morning landscape and music 66 
 
 XVII. The Jungfrau Alp and its Avalanches 70 
 
 XVIII. Mortar-avalanches. Valley and glaciers of Grindlewald .... 74 
 
 XIX. Pass of the Grand Scheideck to Meyringen 80 
 
 XX. Glacier of Rosenlani and Falls of the Reichenbach 84 
 
 XXI. Twilight, Evening, and Night in Switzerland. A Sabbath 
 
 in Meyringen 87 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXII. From Meyringen to the Pass of the Grimsel 92 
 
 XXIII. Upper Hasli and the river Aar. Falls of the Aar. Deso- 
 
 lation of the Pass 96 
 
 XXIV. Hospice of the Grimsel. Glaciers of the Aar 100 
 
 XXV. Lake of the Dead. Glacier of the Rhone. Pass of the Furca 104 
 XXVI. The Devil's Bridge. Savage defiles of the Reuss 108 
 
 XXVII. Legends of the pass. Cowper's Memoria Technica 112 
 
 XXVIII. Associations. Canton Uri, and the Memoirs of Tell 116 
 
 XXIX. Traditions of Freedom. Religious liberty the garrison of 
 
 civil . 120 " 
 
 XXX. Lake of Uri and town of Lucerne 128 
 
 XXXI. Ascent of the Righi. Extraordinary glory of the view.. 133 
 XXXII. Lucerne to Einsiedeln. Dr. Zay's history of the Rossberg 
 
 Avalanche 143 
 
 XXXIII. Morgarten, Sempach, and Arnold of Winkelried 149 
 
 XXXIV. Pilgrimage of Einsiedeln and worship of the Virgin 152 
 
 XXXV. Zurich and Zwingle. Banishment of Protestants from Lo- 
 carno 160 
 
 XXXVI. Scenery on the Lake of Zurich. Poetry for Pilgrims. 
 
 Grandeur of the Lake of Wallenstadt 166 
 
 XXXVII. Baths of Pfeffers. Gorge of the Tamina. Coire and the 
 
 Grisons 171 
 
 XXXVIII. Course of the Rhine. Louis Philippe. The Royal School- 
 master at Reichenau. Reichenau to Thusis 175 
 
 XXXIX. Terrific Grandeur of the Splugen. The VIA MALA. 
 
 Creation as a Teacher of God 179 
 
 XL. Natural Theology of the Splugen 185 
 
 XLI Pass of the Splugen into Italy. The Cardinell and Mac- 
 
 donald's Army. Campo Dolcino and Chiavenna 188 
 
 XLII. The Buried Town of Pleurs 194 
 
 XLIII. Beauty of the Lake of Como. Como to Milan. Leonar- 
 do da Vinci 199 
 
 XLIV. The Cathedral of Milan. The Gospel in Italy 203 
 
 XLV. Silvio Pellico, and the Bible in Italy 208 
 
 XLVI. The Farewell. Swiss character and freedom 211 
 
THE PILGRIM 
 
 SHADOW OF THE JUNGFRAU. 
 
 * 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introduction. The serious side of travel. 
 
 HAIL to the Oberland Alps ! As Mont Blanc is the Monarch 
 of Mountains in all Switzerland, so the Jungfrau is the Maiden 
 Queen, with her dazzling coronet of sky- piercing crystal crags 
 for ever dropping from their setting, and her icy sceptre, and her 
 robe of glaciers, with its fathomless fringe of snow. She too is 
 " Earth's rosy Star," so beautiful, so glorious, that to have seen 
 her light, if a man had leisure, would be worth a pilgrimage 
 round the world. To have heard her voice, deep thunder with- 
 out cloud, breaking the eternal stillness in the clear serene of 
 heaven, and to have beheld her, shaking from her brow its rest- 
 less battlements of avalanches, were an event in one's life, from 
 which to calculate the longitudes of years. 
 
 But how can any man who has seen this describe it? To 
 think of doing this perfectly, is indeed perfectly hopeless ; and 
 yet any man may tell how it affected him. A celebrated treatise 
 on self-knowledge has the following curious intellectual recipe : 
 " Accustom yourself to speak naturally, pertinently, and ration- 
 ally on all subjects, and you will soon learn to think so on the 
 best." This is somewhat as if a man should say, Learn to float 
 well in all seas, and you will be able to swim in fresh-water 
 rivers. But a man may both have learned to think and to speak, 
 naturally, pertinently, and rationally, if not on all subjects, yet 
 on some, and still may find himself put to shame by a snow- 
 
 PART n. 2 
 
2 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. i. 
 
 covered mountain in the setting day, or beneath " the keen full 
 moon." 
 
 In attempting to paint scenery by words, you are conscious of 
 the imperfection of language, which, being a creation of the 
 mind, is by no means of so easy use, skilfully and accurately, 
 in delineating form, as in conveying thought. I am reminded 
 of the curious experience related bjr Coleridge. " Some folks," 
 he says, " apply epithets as boys do in making Latin verses. 
 When I first looked upon the Falls of the Clyde, I was unable to 
 find a word to express my feelings. At last a man, a stranger to 
 me,* who arrived about the same time, said 'How majestic!' 
 It was the precise term, and I turned round and was saying 
 1 Thank you, sir, that is the exact word for it,' when he added in 
 the same breath, < Yes, how very pretty /' ' 
 
 It is easier to tell how nature affects the heart and mind, than 
 to describe nature worthily ; and the passages in our favorite 
 poets, which go down deepest into the heart, and are kept as 
 odorous gums or bits of musk amidst our common thoughts, are 
 those which express, not the features, so much as the voice of 
 nature, and the feelings wakened by it, and the answering tones 
 from the Harp of Immortality within our own souls. It is much 
 easier for the Imagination to create a fine picture, than for the 
 mind to draw a real picture with power of Imagination ; for the 
 soul works more feelingly and intensely in the Ideal, than the 
 accurate senses report ideally in the actual. What an exquisite 
 picture has the sensitive, sad genius of Henry Kirke White drawn 
 of a Gothic tomb ! Had he been to copy it from some fine old 
 church-yard or cathedral, it would not have been half so affect- 
 ing, so powerful. 
 
 " Lay me in the Gothic tomb, 
 In whose solemn fretted gloom 
 I may lie in mouldering state, 
 With all the grandeur of the great : 
 Over me, magnificent, 
 Carve a stately monument : 
 Then thereon my statue lay, 
 With hands in attitude to pray, 
 And angels serve to hold my head, 
 Weeping o'er the marble dead." 
 
CHAP, i.] THE SOUL IN NATURE. 3 
 
 How, then, says the authoress of some very beautiful letters 
 to a Mother from abroad, speaking of the land of Tell, over 
 which we are about to wander, " How then can I describe, for 
 there I could only feel? And in truth, the country is so beauti- 
 ful and sublime, that I believe, had Schiller seen it, he would 
 have feared endeavoring to embody it in his immortal play. 
 How courageous is imagination ! And is it not well that it is so, 
 for how much should we lose, even of the real, if the Poet drew 
 only from reality !" 
 
 There is profound truth in this. And hence one of those 
 homely and admirable observations, which, amidst gems of poe- 
 try, Coleridge was always dropping in conversation, as fast as a 
 musician scatters sounds out of an instrument. " A poet," said 
 he, " ought not to pick nature's pocket : let him borrow, and so 
 borrow, as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine na- 
 ture accurately, but write from recollection ; and trust more to ; 
 your imagination than to your memory." 
 
 And yet, how many are the books of Travellers, who have 
 gone among the finest scenes of nature, and given us free and 
 careless pictures and incidents, lively stones, anecdotes, the talk 
 of men, the wayward etchings of wild life and manners, but have 
 made no attempt whatever to connect with nature the eternal 
 feeling and conscience of the soul. Perhaps they would call 
 this sermonizing; as Charles Lamb once playfully translated 
 one of Coleridge's mottos, sermoni propriora, properer for a ser- 
 mon ! But unless we travel with something in our hearts higher 
 than the forms of earth, and a voice to speak of it, to report it, 
 " little do we see in nature that is ours." And we bring our- 
 selves under the Poet's condemnation : 
 
 " Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, 
 He is a slave, the meanest we can meet. 5 * 
 
 Therefore, if any reader thinketh that he finds things " pro- 
 perer for a sermon " in our little picture of a pilgrimage, we 
 pray him to remember, that the sermons in stones are precisely 
 the things in nature most generally overlooked ; and we only 
 wish that we had more of them and better reported. For mere 
 
4 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. ICHAP. i, 
 
 pictures, ever so beautiful, are scarce worth travelling so far to 
 see, except we link their sacred lessons to our inner selves. 
 Many of Wordsworth's sonnets are gems beyond all price, be- 
 cause they embalm rich moral sentiments, like apples of gold in 
 pictures of silver : and in his own words, 
 
 " The Grove, the sky-built Temple, and the Dome, 
 Though clad in colors beautiful and pure, 
 Find in the heart of man no natural home : 
 The immortal mind craves objects that endure." 
 
 And it ought to have them, it ought to be accustomed to them ; 
 every man ought to endeavor to present them to his fellow-man. 
 And indeed how can a man go about the whole circle of our 
 humanity, copying everywhere the hieroglyphics on its external 
 temple, and yet elude all serious reference* to our Immortality 
 and Accountability ? Say that these things will make his book 
 less popular ; why wish to make it popular, and not endeavor at 
 the same time to make it useful ? " Whole centuries," says 
 Schiller, " have shown philosophers as well as artists busied in 
 immersing truth and beauty in the depths of a vulgar humanity ; 
 the former sink, but the latter struggles up victoriously, in her 
 own indestructible energy." 
 
 How noble is that maxim of Schiller, how worthy of all en- 
 deavor to fulfil it : " Live with your century, but be not its 
 creature ; bestow upon your contemporaries not what they praise, 
 but what they need." 
 
 The tendency of travel, in our day, is strong towards habits 
 of outwardness, and forgetfulness of that which is inward. The 
 world is in two great moving currents, each looking at the other 
 as its spectacle, its show, its theatrical amusement. A book must 
 be a comedy ; there is scarce such a thing possible as serious 
 meditation. The world are divided between living for what 
 other people will say of them, and living to see how other people 
 live. Certes, this is an evil habit, and every record of external 
 shows, that does not lead the mind to better things, tends to con- 
 solidate and fasten the world's incurable worldliness. Thus, the 
 more a man knows of other things, the less he may know of his 
 own being ; and the more he lives upon the food of amusement, 
 
CHAP, i.] THE SOUL IN NATURE. 5 
 
 the less power will the Word of God, and those trains of thought 
 that spring from it, and direct the mind to it, have over him. 
 "iWe know ourselves least/' says Dr. Donne, 
 
 " We know ourselves least ; mere outward shows 
 
 Our minds so store, 
 
 That our souls, no more than our eyes, disclose 
 But form and color. Only he, who knows 
 Himself, knows more." 
 
 So then we will remember, while wandering amidst form and 
 color, that we ourselves are not mere form and color ; that while 
 all we look on and admire is transitory and changing, we our- 
 selves are eternal ; and we are gathering an eternal hue, even 
 from the colors that are temporal. Amidst the wreck of is and 
 was, we will be mindful that " His finger is upon us, who is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." 
 
 Most strikingly does John Foster remark that " A man may 
 have lived almost an age, and traversed a continent, minutely 
 examining its curiosities, and interpreting the half obliterated 
 characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process 
 operating on his own mind to impress or to erase characteristics 
 of much more importance to him, than all the figured brass or 
 marble that Europe contains. After having explored many a 
 cavern, or dark ruinous avenue, he may have left undetected a 
 darker recess in his character. He may have conversed with 
 many people, in different languages, on numberless subjects; 
 but having neglected those conversations with himself, by which 
 his whole moral being should have been continually disclosed to 
 his view, he is better qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues 
 of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trader ; to repre- 
 sent the manners of the Italians or the Turks ; to narrate the 
 proceedings of the Jesuits or the adventures of the gypsies; than 
 to write the history of his own mind." 
 
 I have no need of an apology for this quotation, and I may 
 add one short word more, from the same great writer, before we 
 take our Alpenstock in hand, as a prelude, or grand opening 
 symphony, to the solemn beauty of which sound we may step 
 across the threshold of the great Temple we are entering. 
 
6 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. i. 
 
 " This fair display of the Creator's works and resources will be 
 gratifying, the most and the latest, to the soul animated with the 
 love of God, and the confidence of soon entering on a nobler 
 scene. Let me, he may say, look once more at what my Divine 
 Father has diffused even hither, as a faint intimation of what he 
 has somewhere else. I am pleased with this, as a distant out- 
 skirt, as it were, of the Paradise toward which I am going." 
 
 Yes ! the Paradise towards which we are going ! The trees 
 of Life, the River of the Water of Life, the City of God, the 
 streets of gold, the walls of jasper, the gates of pearl, and the Lord 
 God Almighty and the Lamb for the Temple of it ; no night, nor 
 storm, nor darkness, nor need of sun nor moon, for the glory of 
 God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the Light thereof. 
 Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 
 
CHAP, ii.] SETTING OUT. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lake Leman. Entrance on the Valley of the Rhone. 
 
 IT must be of a Monday morning, in August, in delightful wea- 
 ther, that you set out with me from Geneva, on a pedestrian tour 
 through the Oberland Alps, which may perhaps be closed with 
 the grand pass of the Splugen, and a march through the North 
 of Italy, into the secluded valleys of the Waldenses. But as we 
 cannot walk across the Lake, our pedestrianizing begins by sail- 
 ing in a crowded steamer, on board which we probably find a 
 number of just such travellers as ourselves, accoutred with knap- 
 sacks and stout iron-soled shoes, and perhaps a blouse and an 
 Alpenstock, determined on meeting dangers, and discovering wild 
 scenes, such as no other traveller has encountered. I was happy 
 in having for a companion and friend an English gentleman and 
 a Christian. For this cause, our communion had no undercur- 
 rent of distrust or difference, and we could sympathize in each 
 other's most sacred feelings, although he was a Churchman and 
 a Monarchist, while I belonged to the Church with the primitive 
 Bishop, and the State without a King. 
 
 By the way, that word Churchman is a singular appellation 
 for a Christian. It seems to be taking the species instead of the 
 genus for designation, and it reminds me of the saying, " Israel 
 hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth Temples." It is a pity to 
 put the less for the greater. We are all Churchmen, of course, 
 if we be Christ's men, but we may be furious Churchmen, in 
 any denomination, without being Christ's men at all. 
 
 We started at half past eight for Villeneuve, at the other end 
 of the Lake, and the day being very lovely, we had a most en- 
 chanting sail. A conversation with some Romish Priests on board 
 was productive of some little interest. They defended their 
 Church with great earnestness against the charge of saint and 
 
8 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. n. 
 
 image worship, which we dwelt upon. Then we compared our 
 different pronunciation of Latin, repeating the Quadrupedanle 
 putrem, et cetera, for illustration. They knew nothing about 
 Greek, and of course had never examined the New Testament in 
 the original. 
 
 The end of Lake Leman near Vevay and Villeneuve can 
 scarcely be exceeded in beauty by any of the lakes in Switzer- 
 land. It very much resembles the Lake of Lucerne. The finest 
 portion of Lake George looks like it, except that the mountains 
 which enclose and border the Lake of Geneva beyond Vevay are 
 vastly higher and more sublime than any in the neighborhood of 
 the American lakes. To see the full beauty of the Lake of 
 Geneva, the traveller must be upon the summit of the Jura moun- 
 tains in a clear day ; then he sees it in its grand and mighty set- 
 ting, as a sea of pearl amidst crags of diamonds ; coming from 
 France, the scene bursts upon him like a world in heaven. But 
 if in fine weather sailing toward Villeneuve, he have a view, as 
 we did, of the Grand St. Bernard, magnificently robed with snow, 
 he will think also that the sublimity and beauty of this scene, and 
 of the Lake itself, can scarcely be exceeded. 
 
 The Lake, you are aware, is the largest in Switzerland, being 
 at least fifty miles in length, a magnificent crystal mirror for 
 the stars and mountains, where even Mont Blanc, though sixty 
 miles away, can see his broad glittering diadem of snow and ice 
 reflected in clear weather. How beautifully Lord Byron has 
 described the lake in its various moods, and the lovely scenery, 
 connected with a sense of its moral lessons calling him away 
 from evil, like a sister's voice, Brother, come home ! Ah, if the 
 Poet had but followed those better impulses, which sweet nature 
 sometimes with her simple sermons awakened in his soul ! 
 
 " Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing, 
 Which warns me with its stillness to forsake 
 Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring ! 
 This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing * 
 
 To waft me from destruction ; once I loved 
 Torn ocean's roar ; but thy soft murmuring 
 Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved 
 That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved." 
 
CHAP, ii.] THE RHONE IN THE LAKE. 
 
 The lesson of the quiet sail is lost on board the anxious steamer 
 with her noisy paddles ; but any traveller may enjoy it, if he 
 will take the time, and few things in nature can be more lovely 
 than a sail or a walk along the Lake of Geneva in some of its 
 exquisite sunsets. Meditation there " may think down hours to 
 moments," and there is something both solemn and melancholy, 
 in the fall of the curtain of evening over such a scene, which 
 quickens the inward sense of one's immortality and accountability, 
 and irresistibly carries the heart up to God in prayer. 
 
 Our boat lands her passengers in small lighters at Villeneuve, 
 where we take a diligence for St. Maurice, some three hours' 
 drive up the Valley of the Rhone. The river runs into the Lake 
 at Villeneuve, and out of it at Geneva ; though why the radiant 
 sparkling stream, that issues with such swiftness and beauty, 
 should bear the same name with the torrent of mud that rolls into 
 it, it is difficult to say. Nevertheless, a Christian bears the same 
 name after his conversion that he did before; and the new and 
 beautiful characteristics of this river, when it rushes from the 
 lake at the republican and Protestant end of it, might well re- 
 mind you of the change, which takes place between the charac- 
 ter of a depraved man, and a regenerated child of God. Our 
 hearts come down wild and ferocious from the mountains, bear- 
 ing with them rocks and mud, casting up, as the Word of God 
 saith, mire and dirt. So are we in our native, graceless depravity. 
 It is only by flowing into the crystal Lake of Divine Love, that 
 we leave our native impurities all behind us, on the shore of the 
 world, and then when we reappear, when we flow forth again 
 from this blessed Baptism, we are like the azure, arrowy Rhone, 
 reflecting the hues of heaven. Then again the muddy Arve 
 from the mountains falls into us, and other worldly streams join 
 us, so that before we get to the sea we have, alas, too often, deep 
 stains still of the mud of our old depravity. The first Adam 
 goes with us to the sea, though much veiled and hidden ; but the 
 last Adam is to have the victory. Some streams there are, how- 
 ever, that flow all the way from the Lake to the Sea, quite clear 
 and unmingled. The course of such a regenerated stream through 
 the world is the most beautiful sight this side Heaven. 
 
 The immense alluvial deposit from the Rhone, where it pours 
 
10 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. n. 
 
 into the Lake, makes the valley for -some distance from Villeneuve 
 a dreary bog, which every year is usurping something more of 
 dominion ; but you soon get into wilder scenery, which becomes 
 extremely beautiful before reaching St. Maurice. Here Mr. 
 Rogers's " key unlocks a kingdom," for the mountains on either 
 side so nearly shut together, that there is only the width of the 
 river and the narrow street between them. You cross a bridge 
 upon a single arch, and find yourself wondering at the great 
 strength of the pass, and entering a village, which is like a stone 
 basket hanging to a perpendicular wall. Farther on, an old her- 
 mitage high up overhangs the road, like a grey wasp's nest, under 
 the eaves of the mountain. Hereabouts you cross a vast mound 
 of rock-rubbish, made up of the ruins of one of the various ava- 
 lanches which from time to time bury whole fields of the verdant 
 Alpine Valleys, and sometimes whole villages. This was an 
 avalanche of mud, glacier, granite, and gravel, which came down 
 from the lofty summit of the Dent du Midi in 1835, not swiftly, 
 but like thick glowing lava, and covered the valley for a length 
 of nine hundred feet. 
 
 At St. Maurice you pass from the Canton de Vaud to the 
 Romish Canton of the Valais, a transition perceptible at once in 
 the degradation of the inhabitants. We took a char-d-lanc from 
 St. Maurice to Martigny, about eleven miles, arriving at seven 
 o'clock in the evening, having visited the superb cascade formerly 
 called the Pissevache, on our way. It only wants a double vol- 
 ume of water to make it sublime, for it rolls out of a fissure in 
 the mountain three hundred feet high, and makes a graceful 
 spring, clear of all the crags, for more than a hundred and twenty 
 feet, and then, when it has recovered, so to speak, from the fright 
 of such a fall, runs off in a clear little river to join the muddy 
 Rhone. So, sometimes, a youth from the country, who had, at 
 first, all the freshness and purity of home and of a mother's love 
 about him, gets lost in the corruption of a great city. 
 
 Our pedestrianizing this day, you perceive, was accomplished 
 first in the steamer, second in the diligence, third in the char-a- 
 banc. For myself, having got wet by a furious cloud of spray, 
 which the wind blew over me as I advanced too near under the 
 water- fall, I did really walk the greater part of the way from 
 
CHAP, ii.] TOWER AT MARTIGNY. 11 
 
 thence to Martigny, about four miles, leaving my friend to enjoy 
 the char-a-banc alone, and to order our supper when he arrived 
 at the inn. This char-d-banc, so much used in Switzerland, is a 
 hard leathern sofa for two, or at most three, in which you are 
 placed as in the stocks, and trundled sideways upon wheels. It 
 is a droll machine, somewhat as if a very short Broadway omni- 
 bus, being split in two lengthwise, each half, provided with an 
 additional pair of wheels, should set up for itself. It was in this 
 conveyance that we rode, while travelling in the Canton de Va- 
 lais, for no one would dream of pedestrianizing here, unless 
 indeed along the sublime pass of the Simplon between Briegg and 
 Domodossola. I had moreover passed through the Valley of the 
 Rhone before into Italy, and deferred my pedestrianizing till I 
 should come upon a new route over mountains so rough, that my 
 companion with his mule could go no faster than I on foot. He 
 preferred to ride always ; I chose to walk, whenever the scenery 
 was sublime enough to justify it, and the road rough enough to 
 make it agreeable. 
 
 The evening at Martigny was transcendently beautiful, the 
 weather being fine, the atmosphere wildly, spiritually bright, and 
 the moon within one night of her fulness ; " the moon above the 
 tops of the snow-shining mountains." We ascended the hill 
 near Martigny to the picturesque old Feudal Tower, by this 
 moonlight, and rarely in my wanderings have I witnessed a scene 
 to be compared with this. Looking down the valley, the outline 
 is bounded by a snowy ridge of great beauty, but in the direction 
 of the Grand St. Bernard mountains of dark verdure rise into the 
 air like pyramidal black wedges cleaving the heavens. We are 
 high above the village, and on one side can look down sheer into 
 the roaring torrent, many hundred feet ; it makes you dizzy to 
 look. The ruins of the castle, the verdure around it, the village 
 below, the silence of night, the summer softness of the air, com- 
 bined with an almost autumnal brightness, the mountains in their 
 grandeur sleeping in such awful, such solemn repose, the distant 
 landscape, so indistinctly beautiful, the white rays of the moon 
 falling in such sheets of misty transparence over it, and the 
 glittering snowy peaks which lift themselves before you like grey 
 prophets of a thousand years, yea, like messengers from Eter- 
 
12 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. n. 
 
 nity, is there anything needed to make this one of the most 
 magnificent scenes, and most impressive too, that we shall be 
 likely to find in all Switzerland ? 
 
 "A deep 
 
 And solemn harmony pervades 
 The hollow vale from steep to steep, 
 And penetrates the glades." 
 
 The night is so beautiful, that it is difficult to intrude upon it 
 by going to bed ; and yet, if travellers would be up betimes in 
 the morning, they must sleep at night. But all night long me- 
 thinks one could walk by such a moon, amidst such glorious 
 mountains, and not be wearied. Some years ago we passed this 
 same valley in a very different season, when a great part of the 
 Swiss world was covered deep with snow, and the frost was so 
 sharp, that the trodden path creaked under our feet, and our 
 breath almost froze into little snow-clouds in the air. The 
 scenery then was of a savage sublimity, but now, how beautiful ! 
 
CHAP, in.] DESPOTISM IN THE VALAIS. 13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ecclesiastical despotism in the Valais. Measures of the Jesuits. 
 
 WE started at six in the morning, again in a cliar-d-banc, for Sion 
 and Sierre, twenty-seven miles. A party of lads from the Jesuit 
 Seminary at Fribourg were at the door, under the care of their 
 instructors, accoutred for the day's pedestrian excursion. They 
 spend some weeks in this manner, attended by the priests ; but 
 learning lessons of freedom from wild nature, drinking in the 
 pure mountain air, and gaining elasticity of body and spirit by 
 vigorous exercise. They were going to Chamouny. Between 
 Martigny and Sion, our man of the char-d-banc pointed out to us 
 the scene of a recent desperate conflict between the iiberalists 
 and despotists of the Canton, part of which ille fuit, and the 
 whole of which he saw, being on the Sion side when they burned 
 the beautiful bridge which the furious torrent had so long re- 
 spected. The matter has ended in the establishment of a priestal 
 republican despotism, under which the protestant religion is pro- 
 scribed, its exercise forbidden even in private, the protestant 
 schools are broken up, and intolerance to the heart's content of 
 Romanism forms the political and religious regime of the Can- 
 ton. The Bishop or Archbishop of Sion, which is the chief town 
 of the Canton du Valais, presides over the general assembly. 
 
 Here is an opportunity of instruction for impartial observers, 
 which they ought not to let pass. It is always interesting to see 
 a fair experiment, on a questioned subject, either in chemistry or 
 morals. You must have a large laboratory, good retorts, fur- 
 naces, crucibles, blowpipes, and so forth, and let the chemical 
 agents work without hindrance. This Canton in Switzerland is 
 a grand laboratory, where the Jesuits, unimpeded, have just de- 
 monstrated the nature of their system. They have played out 
 the play, and all who please may satisfy themselves as to the re- 
 siduum. In point of oppression, it is remarked abroad, they have 
 
14 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. m. 
 
 run beyond all that can be imagined of the most exorbitant des- 
 potism, not stopping contented with the laws of Louis XIV., 
 but dragging from the mould of ages the legislation even of 
 Louis IX. 
 
 I shall draw a description of their freaks from a Parisian Jour- 
 nal before me,* which answers the question, How the Jesuits 
 govern the Canton du Valais. The Grand Council of the Can- 
 ton, under direction of Jesuit Priests, have adopted a law respect- 
 ing illegal assemblies, and condemnable discussions and conversa- 
 tions, of which the first article runs as follows: Those who hold 
 conversations tending to scandalize the Holy Catholic, Apostolic 
 and Roman religion, or contrary to good morals, shall be pun- 
 ished with a fine of from 20 to 200 francs, and imprisonment from 
 a month to two years. Also those who introduce, affix, expose, 
 lend, distribute, or keep secretly and without authorization, writ- 
 ings or bad books, or caricatures which attack directly or indi- 
 rectly the Holy Religion of the State and its Ministers. The 
 objects designated shall be confiscated, and in case of a second 
 offence, the highest amount of fine and imprisonment shall be 
 doubled. Blasphemers are to be punished according to the 
 criminal laws. 
 
 Here are two classes of crime noted ; scandalous and blas- 
 phemous conversations, and having bad books in your library. 
 A Valaisan may chance to say that such or such a miracle 
 published, by the Reverend Fathers, appears to him some- 
 what Apocryphal ; the opinion is scandalous against the Holy 
 Catholic, Apostolic and Romish religion, and he shall undergo 
 fine and imprisonment for his enormous crime. He dares to pre- 
 tend that certain priests do not set the best possible example ; the 
 opinion is thrice scandalous, for which he shall suffer the highest 
 amount of fine and imprisonment. He goes even a little further ; 
 possibly he discusses the claim of the Virgin Mary to the adora- 
 tion of the faithful, and maintains that on this point the Romish 
 Church is contrary to the New Testament. This is worse than 
 a mere scandalous opinion or proposition ; it is blasphemy ; and 
 blasphemy is a crime for criminal law to punish. If the hardy 
 
 * The Semeur. 
 
CHAP, in.] LAWS OF THE VALAIS. 15 
 
 Valaisan shall dare affirm that the morality of the Jesuits is pos- 
 sibly very immoral, this is blasphemy in the first degree, and 
 must be punished with the highest infamy. 
 
 It is almost incredible that a law of this nature can have been 
 promulgated in 1845, upon the frontiers of France and Italy, 
 under notice of the public press, when the Jesuits have so many 
 reasons for making men believe that their system is not incom- 
 patible with some degree of liberty. But it is a fair experiment 
 fully played out. It would scarcely have been believed that they 
 would have dared offer to Europe a spectacle of such drunkenness 
 of despotism. In France, the people were full of indignation 
 against the law of sacrilege in that nation, and after the Revolu- 
 tion of July, they utterly abolished it. But that law, in com- 
 parison with this of the Canton du Valais, concerning scandalous 
 opinions and propositions, was sweetness and benevolence itself. 
 It was necessary at least to have actually committed the offence 
 in some place of worship, during the religious exercises, or to 
 have directly attacked some minister of the church. But in the 
 Canton du Valais it is enough to have simply expressed a scan- 
 dalous opinion, in the street, or the tavern, or in one's own house 
 in presence of a neighbor ! Did the Inquisition ever go farther 
 than this ? 
 
 We should have thought that the laws of the eleventh century 
 commanding to pierce the tongues of blasphemers and heretics 
 with a hot iron, existed now only in history, as monuments of an 
 atrocious barbarity. But it is a great mistake. The Jesuits suffer 
 nothing of cruelty and infamy to perish. They keep it concealed 
 for a season ; they shut up their arsenal when the popular storm 
 thunders ; but so soon as the sun shines, they bring up again 
 their chains, their pitiless axes and instruments of torture. 
 
 Again by this law men shall be fined and imprisoned, not only 
 for having written bad books, or drawn wicked caricatures against 
 the holy religion of the State, not only for having introduced into 
 the Canton, or exposed, or distributed, or lent, such books or 
 writings, but even for having knowingly or without tiuthorization 
 kept them in their libraries. An inhabitant of the Valais, for 
 example, has among his books the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, 
 Montesquieu, or even the new writings proscribed in the Index 
 
16 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. in. 
 
 of the Romish Congregation, such as the books of Guizot, Cousin, 
 Dupin, JoufFroy, Thierry ^ in a word, whatever work may have 
 been published in France for half a century, except the nauseous 
 productions of the Jesuitical school. Well ! the bare fact of hav- 
 ing kept these volumes constitutes a crime, unless the authoriza- 
 tion of the Company of Ignatius shall have been obtained, a thing 
 which cannot be, except for its most devoted creatures. Cer- 
 tainly, this is new, original, unheard of. We have heard of 
 certain ordinances of our ancient kings punishing the readers of 
 a bad book, after having condemned the author ; but we never 
 heard of a law pronouncing a universal sentence against the 
 proprietors and keepers of works contrary to the Holy Catholic, 
 Apostolic and Romish religion. 
 
 But how can the law be executed ? Will they make domi- 
 ciliary visits, to examine, one after another, the books belonging 
 to each individual ? Will they ferret for them in the secret coi- 
 ners of the household, in order to be sure that the proscribed 
 writings are not shut up in some hiding-place ? When a poor 
 inhabitant of the Canton comes under the suspicions of the Clergy 
 because he has not regularly kept the fasts, nor taken his note 
 of confession at canonical times, will they break open his bureaus, 
 his furniture, to discover the unhappy volumes, which have in- 
 spired him with such infidelity ? We should not be at all sur- 
 prised at this. Where there is a will, there is a way. If they 
 would not shrink from publishing such a monstrous law, neither 
 will they quail before the measure necessary to carry it into exe- 
 cution. It will be a permanent inquisition, which will always 
 possess the means of oppressing and breaking down those who 
 will not humbly bow beneath its yoke of bondage. 
 
 Talk to us after this of the generous principles of the Jesuits 
 and the Romish Priests ! Tell us, ye propagandists of the Rom- 
 ish faith, your love of liberty ! Tell us for the millionth time 
 that you, and you only, know how to respect the rights of the 
 people and the progress of humanity ! Pretend your loving de- 
 mocracy in your sermons and your journals ! Go to, we know 
 you of old, and soon there will not be a reasonable man in the 
 world, who will not discover under your mask the deep imprints 
 of your insatiable instinct of tyranny ! If there were the least 
 
CHAP, in.] LAWS OF THE VALAIS. 17 
 
 particle of sincerity in your liberal maxims and pretences, you 
 would at least express your indignation against such monstrous 
 laws promulgated in the Canton du Valais ; you would attack 
 these abominable enterprises of the Jesuits ; but what one of 
 your journals is there, that would have the frankness and sin- 
 cerity to do this ? Every Ecclesiastical Gazette is silent, and 
 yet to-morrow these same despotic journals will dare tell their 
 adversaries that they are the enemies of liberty. 
 
 Comedians, comedians ! the execrable farce you are playing 
 will have to be finished, and then beware of the conclusion ! 
 
 This is an energetic strain of criticism, appeal, and invective, 
 before which, if there be much of it, such detestable measures 
 cannot stand. The Jesuits are the Mamelukes of the Romish 
 Church ; neither king nor people can be independent or free 
 where such a body of tyrants, the worse for being secret, bear 
 sway. Note the expression directly or indirectly in the law 
 against writings and propositions tending to bring into disrepute 
 the Holy Romish religion of State. What traps and caverns of 
 tyranny are here ! What room for more than inquisitorial acute- 
 ness and cruelty, in searching out and detecting the indirect ten- 
 dencies of publications, which the Priests see fit to proscribe. 
 The most innocent writing may thus be made the ground of a 
 severe imprisonment ; and as to all investigation or discussion of 
 the truth, it becomes impossible. 
 
 But we have pleasanter footsteps to follow than those of the 
 Jesuits ; so farewell to their trail for the present. We shall 
 meet them again in Switzerland* 
 
 PART II. 3 
 
18 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. iv. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Physical plagues of the Canton du Valais and of Switzerland. Hospital 
 for the Cretins. 
 
 APPROACHING Sion from Martigny the view is exceedingly pic- 
 turesque and romantic, by reason of several extensive old castles 
 on successive craggy peaks, that rise in commanding grandeur, 
 like the Acropolis at Athens, and seem, as you advance upwards, 
 to fill the whole valley. One of the highest summits is crowned 
 with a church or convent, a most imposing object, seen against 
 the sky long before you arrive at the base of the village. The 
 view from this church in every direction, or from the crags on 
 which it is perched, is so extensive, so rich, and so picturesque, 
 as abundantly to recompense even a tired traveller for the toil of 
 the ascent. Besides, there is on this hill an exceedingly aged 
 old rocky edifice of worship, that looks as if it might have ex- 
 isted before the Roman Catholic Church itself began to have a 
 being. Of the village below, wooden shoes and woollen stockings 
 seemed to be the staple commodity, while a knot of industrious 
 women, washing clothes around the fountain in the centre of the 
 street, were, when we passed, the most striking object in view. 
 
 Age, disease, uncleanly cottages, hard labor, penury, scanty 
 and unwholesome food, will transform beauty into ugliness, any- 
 where in the world, even under the most delicious climate. What 
 a change ! Could any being, unacquainted with the progress of 
 our race from elastic youth to that colorless, toothless time, when 
 the grasshopper is a burden, believe that these forms, which seern 
 now a company of the personified genii of wrinkles, were once 
 as fair as the Virgin Mother of their invocations ? They may 
 have been. Youth itself is beauty, and the most secret, black, 
 and midnight hags were once young. But Shakspeare need not 
 have gone upon the Continent, nor Wordsworth among the fish- 
 women of Calais, to find good types of witches. I think I have 
 
CHAP, iv.] PLAGUE OF GRETINISM. 19 
 
 seen in Edinburgh as fair examples of tough, old, furrowed ugli- 
 ness, as in Switzerland, or Turkey, or Italy, or Spain, or Egypt. 
 Old age is beautiful, when gentleness goes with it, and it has 
 filial tenderness and care to lean upon ; the Christian's hope 
 within, and the reverential fond pride and honor of grey hairs in 
 the household, make up a picture almost as beautiful as that of a 
 babe in the cradle, or a girl at play. But where, from infancy 
 to three score years and ten, there are only the hardest, wrinkle- 
 making realities of life, its tasks without its compensations, and 
 its withering superstitions without its consolations, there can be 
 nothing left of beauty ; humanity stands like a blasted pine in 
 the desert. 
 
 " 'Tis said, fantastic Ocean doth unfold 
 The likeness of whate'er on land is seen ; 
 But, if the Nereid Sisters and their Queen, 
 Above whose heads the tide so long hath rolled, 
 The dames resemble, whom we here behold, 
 How terrible beneath the opening waves 
 To sink, and meet them in their fretted caves, 
 Withered, grotesque, immeasurably old." 
 
 Your attention in the Valley of the Rhone is painfully turned 
 to the miserable cretins or idiots, and those unfortunate beings, 
 whose necks are distended with the excrescences of the goitre, as 
 if hung round with swollen bladders of flesh. The poor creatures 
 so afflicted did always seem to me to have an exceeding weight 
 of sadness in their countenances, though they went about labor- 
 ing like others. These frightful diseases prevail among the 
 population of the Valais to a greater extent than anywhere else 
 in Switzerland. The number of inhabitants in Sion is about 
 2500. Poverty, disease, and filth mark the whole valley ; and 
 so long as the people are shut up to the superstitions of 
 Romanism, so long they must remain shut out from the only con- 
 solations that could be some support amidst their miseries, and 
 debarred from the only refining and elevating influences, that 
 could soften and bless a condition so sad as theirs. 
 
 Of the two physical plagues that infest the beautiful valleys 
 of Switzerland, cretinism is by far the worst. It is the most re- 
 pulsive and painful form of idiocy I have ever witnessed. It 
 
20 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. iv. 
 
 makes the human being look less intelligent than the brute. A 
 hooting cry between a howl and a burst of laughter sometimes 
 breaks from the staring and gibbering object before you, a crea- 
 ture that haunts the villages, you cannot say like a spectre, for 
 these miserable beings seemed always in good flesh, but like the 
 personification of the twin brother of madness, and far more 
 fearful. It creates a solemn awe in the soul, to look upon one 
 of these beings, in whom the mind does not seem so much de- 
 ranged, as departed, gone utterly, not a gleam of the Spirit left, 
 the household dog looking incomparably more human. It is a 
 dreadful sight. The cretin will sometimes hobble after you with 
 open hand, grinning for charity, with a chaotic laugh, like a gust 
 of wind clattering through the hall of a ruined castle. 
 
 In the midst of poverty this calamity is doubled, and none of 
 its salient points of grim, disgusting misery can be concealed. 
 The families and villages where it is developed are for the most 
 part miserably poor. Filth, squalid corners for sleep, and im- 
 pure nourishment, help on the disease, like fuel for the plague. 
 No moral causes are set in motion, no more than physical, to 
 combat or hinder its progress, or ameliorate the condition of its 
 victim ; the family and the village bear the burden in silent 
 hopeless despair, as a condemned criminal wears his chains. 
 The only milder feature of the wretchedness that you can think 
 of is this, that the poor cretin himself is not in pain, and is per- 
 fectly insensible to his condition. 
 
 But perhaps you are asking if there are no benevolent efforts 
 to remedy this great evil, no asylums or hospitals for the poor 
 creatures so stricken. I know of only one, and that of recent 
 establishment, though there was never a more suitable field for 
 philanthropy to work in. The celebrated philosopher Saussure 
 conceived that this disease of cretinism must be owing to a vicious 
 atmosphere, wanting in some of the elements necessary to the 
 healthful development of the human system. Meditating on this 
 point, a philanthropic physician among the Oberland Alps not 
 long since conceived the happy idea of combating this evil at its 
 commencement, by taking the children in their infancy from the 
 fearful influence darting upon them, and carrying them away to 
 be nourished and strengthened by the pure air of the mountains. 
 
CHAP, iv.] ASYLUM FOR THE CRETINS. 21 
 
 The name of this excellent man was Doctor Guggenbiihl. He 
 had been called one day to examine a case of some malignant 
 disease, which for ages from time to time had ravaged the beau- 
 tiful valleys of the higher Alps, when his attention was fixed by 
 an old Cretin, who was idiotically Hating a half forgotten prayer 
 before an image of the Virgin at Seedorf in the Canton Uri. 
 How melancholy that the only religion learned by the poor idiot 
 was that of an Ave Maria before a wooden image ! But the 
 sight deeply agitated the sensibilities of the physician in behalf 
 of those unfortunate creatures, and, as he says, " fixed his voca- 
 tion." A being susceptible of the least idea of God seemed to him 
 worthy of every care and every sacrifice. " These stricken in- 
 dividuals of our race," said he, " these brethren beaten down, 
 are they not more worthy of our efforts, than those races of ani- 
 mals, which men strive to bring to perfection ? It is not in vain 
 formulas, but in charitable efforts that we must find that divine 
 love which Jesus Christ has taught us." 
 
 Dr. Guggenbiihl went immediately at work. The attempt 
 had never been tried, of which the idea had come to him, but he 
 found encouragement and sympathy. He fixed upon a Moun- 
 tain in the Oberland called the Abendberg, elevated about three 
 thousand feet above the level of the sea, and seeming to him to 
 combine all the requisites for the foundation of his establishment. 
 Having issued his appeals and subscriptions, he soon received 
 funds sufficient for the support of some twenty children, and con- 
 secrated all his efforts to the moral and physical development of 
 his interesting family. He placed them in the circle of a simple 
 but comfortable domestic life, so distant from the world as not to 
 be distracted by its noise, so near to it as to be accessible to all 
 the good resources of a civilized society. 
 
 The mountain air was pure and sweet for them to breathe in. 
 The mountain streams gave them pure running water for drink- 
 ing, bathing, and washing. The forests afforded wood for the 
 construction of their asylum, around which the land was laid out 
 in gardens. The farm gave them plenty of butter and milk, 
 eggs and poultry. Regular means of communication were es- 
 tablished with Unterseen, Interlachen, and other subjacent 
 villages. 
 
22 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. IY. 
 
 The first medical efforts of Dr. Guggenbuhl with his interest- 
 ing patients were applied to the education, and, in a manner, the 
 regeneration, of the physical organs attacked first by the malady, 
 which plays such frightful ravages afterwards upon the mind. 
 The sensitive form is first to be restored to its natural strength 
 and delicacy, and then the conscience and the wandering facul- 
 ties shall be won back, as it were, to abide within it. The change 
 from the hot, damp, and stagnant atmosphere of poor filthy hovels 
 in narrow valleys, to the clear, cool, bracing air of the mountain 
 summits, is itself enough to create a gradual regeneration in the 
 whole physical being. The patient breathes the principle of a 
 new life, and this is powerfully aided by a simple, healthful 
 nourishment, exercise in the open air, varied and increasing in 
 proportion as strength is regained. Cold bathing, frictions, and 
 various games adapted to fix the attention, and inspire quick 
 voluntary movement, are added to this routine of discipline. 
 
 When thus he has succeeded in modifying the physical organs, 
 and giving them a direction towards health and activity, Dr. 
 Guggenbuhl begins upon the mental faculties. Probably the 
 degrees of idiocy, towards which the disease has advanced, are 
 various, sometimes but the commencement, sometimes sadly con- 
 firmed. The report from which I draw these particulars states 
 that Dr. Guggenbuhl possesses an admirable assistant in his 
 labors of instruction. I have watched this person descending, 
 says the writer, with the sweetest patient benevolence, to the level 
 of these little idiots, and there striking with perseverance upon 
 the hard stone within, till some little sparkle of fire shall be 
 elicited, some sparkling indication of intelligence. And when 
 he has once succeeded in seizing the least end of the thread of 
 thought, with what infinite precautions does he unroll it, lest it be 
 broken. Then at length are multiplied in the depths of the 
 previous intellectual obscurity a series of fruitful, thought-awak- 
 ening images. 
 
 How delightful is this ! It is almost worth the suffering of 
 the calamity, to have so truly benevolent an institution spring 
 from it. This indeed, if not one of the final causes of calamity 
 in this world, is one of its compensating blessings, to give men 
 opportunity for the growth and discipline of charity and love. 
 
CHAP, iv.] MOUNTAIN HOSPITAL. 23 
 
 For the benefit of this Mountain Hospital contributions have been 
 made at Geneva, at Bale, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and London. 
 The King of Prussia with many foreigners of distinction have 
 interested themselves in it. Its successful and benignant influ- 
 ence is but a type of what would wait upon the whole Valley, if 
 all its families could be blest with a truly Christian education. 
 Indeed, if all the ignorant and degraded children of the Canton 
 du Valais could be taken to the mountains and freely and fully 
 educated, the Canton itself would speedily be free ; all the 
 Jesuitism in Europe could not bring back the people to their old 
 bondage of ignorance and superstition. 
 
24 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. v. 
 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Gorge of the Dala. 
 
 AT Sierre, a few miles beyond Sion, we were to leave the valley 
 of the Rhone for the wonderful pass of the Gemmi, and here 
 commenced my pedestrianizing in good earnest. It is always a 
 singularly interesting excursion to go by a side pass from one val- 
 ley, across an apparently impregnable barrier of mountains, over 
 into another. To cross the Gemmi from the valley of the Rhone, 
 you may start from the village of Leuk, or turn off as we did 
 from Sierre by a path of incomparable beauty, winding gradually 
 within the mountains, and rising rapidly by a precipitous ascent, 
 where at every step your view up and down the valley you are 
 leaving becomes more inimitably grand and vast. You clamber 
 over the little village of Varen, which at first was hanging above 
 you, leaving it far below, as well as that of Leuk, which you 
 see farther up the valley, and thus you are toiling on, thinking 
 perhaps that you are witnessing some of the wildest, most pic- 
 turesque and extensive views to be enjoyed on this excursion, 
 when all at once there bursts upon you a scene, surpassing all 
 previous experience and anticipation. You rise to the summit 
 of a steep ascent, step upon a space of table land, advance a few 
 feet, and suddenly find yawning before you a fearful gulf of 
 some nine hundred feet deep, into which the ridge on which you 
 stand seems beetling over, ready to fall with your own weight. 
 It is the gulf of the Dala, a torrent which rolls at the bottom, but 
 almost too far down for you to see the swift glance of the water, 
 or hear the roar, for even the thunder of the cataract of Niagara 
 would be well nigh buried in its depths. 
 
 Advancing a few steps in the direction of this gulf, and turn- 
 ing a natural bastion of the mountain, there comes sweeping down 
 upon you from above, a gorge of overwhelming grandeur, over- 
 
CHAP, v.] GORGE OF THE DALA. 25 
 
 whelming both by the surprise and the deep sublimity of the 
 scene. You tremble to enter it, and staad fixed in silent awe and 
 admiration. Below you is that fearful gulf down plunging in 
 a sheer perpendicular of almost a thousand feet, while above you 
 is a tremendous overhanging precipice of near an equal height, 
 adown and across the face of which runs, cut out, 1he zigzag 
 perilous gallery, by which you are to pass. Whole strata of 
 this perpendicular face of the mountain seem loosened above, 
 and ready to bury you in their fall, and the loose stones come 
 thundering down now and then with the terror of an avalanche. 
 You step carefully down the gallery, or shelf, till perhaps you are 
 near the centre of the pass ; now look up to heaven along the 
 perpendicular height above you, if you can do it without falling, 
 and see those bare pines, that seem bending over the edge ; they 
 look as if blanched with terror. What a steep gigantic moun- 
 tain brow they fringe ! You feel as if the gallery, where you 
 are treading, were a perilous position, and yet you cannot resist 
 going back and gazing again down into the measureless gulf, and 
 enjoying again the sudden sweep of this sublime gorge upon 
 your vision. Towards the pass of the Gemmi, it is closed by a 
 vast ridge of frowning castellated mountains, and still beyond 
 that, loftier snowy summits are shining, such pyramids of pure 
 snow, that they seem as if they would fling the hues of sunset 
 that flash upon them, down into the farthest recesses of the val- 
 ley as it darkens in the evening. 
 
 It was such a sight as this, that suggested that beautiful son- 
 net of Wordsworth, closing with so fine an image. 
 
 " GLORY to God ! and to the Power who came 
 In filial duty, clothed with love divine ; 
 That made his human tabernacle shine 
 Like Ocean burning with purpureal flame ; 
 Or like the Alpine Mount, that takes its name 
 From roseate hues, far kenn'd at morn and even, 
 In times of peace, or when the storm is driven 
 Along the nether region's rugged frame ! 
 Earth prompts Heaven urges ; let us seek the light, 
 Studious of that pure intercourse begun 
 When first our infant brows their lustre won ; 
 So like the Mountain, may we grow more bright, 
 
26 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. v. 
 
 From unimpeded commerce with the Sun, 
 At the approach of all-involving night ! " 
 
 But what is it that arrests your eye on the other side of the 
 gulf, overhung in like manner with a sheer perpendicular moun- 
 tain ? There seems to be something in motion along the smooth 
 face of the precipice, but it is not possible. You look again 
 steadily ; it is actually a line of mules and travellers, creeping 
 like flies along the face of a wall, and you find there is a road 
 there also, cut along this fearful gulf out of the solid rock ; but 
 it is so far across, that the passing caravan of travellers seems 
 like moving insects. You watch them a few moments, as they 
 perhaps are watching you ; and now they pass from the cliff, and 
 enter on the winding fir-covered path, that takes them along the 
 thundering torrent of the Dala down to the village of Leuk. 
 
 The view of this gorge might not perhaps have appeared to us 
 quite so sublime, had we been prepared for it, or had we come 
 gradually upon it ; but the solemn, sudden, overwhelming gran- 
 deur of the view makes it one of the finest passes in all Switzer- 
 land. It stirs the very depths of your soul within you, and it 
 seems as if you could remain motionless before it, and not wish- 
 ing to move, from daylight to sunset, and from sunset to the moon, 
 whose pale, soft, silver light steeps the vales and crags and gla- 
 ciers with such romantic beauty. 
 
CHAP, vi.] LANDSCAPE ELEMENTS. 27 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Elements of the landscape. Alpine flowers. Jonathan Edwards. 
 
 PASSING out from this wonderful scene, through a forest of 
 larches, whose dark verdure is peculiarly appropriate to it, and 
 going up towards the baths of Leuk, the interest of the landscape 
 does not at all diminish. What a concentration and congrega- 
 tion of all elements of sublimity and beauty are before you ! 
 what surprising contrasts of light and shade, of form and color, 
 of softness and ruggedness ! Here are vast heights above you, 
 and vast depths below, villages hanging to the mountain sides, 
 green pasturages and winding paths, chalets dotting the moun- 
 tains, lovely meadow slopes enamelled with flowers, deep immea- 
 surable ravines, torrents thundering down them, colossal, overhang- 
 ing, castellated reefs of granite, snowy peaks with the setting sun 
 upon them. You command a view far down over the valley of 
 the Rhone with its villages and castles, and its mixture of rich 
 farms and vast beds and heaps of mountain fragments, deposited 
 by furious torrents. What affects the mind very powerfully on 
 first entering upon these scenes is the deep dark blue, so intensely 
 deep and overshadowing, of the gorge at its upper end, and the 
 magnificent proud sweep of the granite barrier, which there shuts 
 it in, apparently without a passage. The mountains rise like 
 vast supernatural intelligences taking a material shape, and draw- 
 ing around themselves a drapery of awful grandeur ; there is a 
 forehead of power and majesty, and the likeness of a kingly 
 crown above it. 
 
 Amidst all the grandeur of this scenery, I remember to have 
 been in no place more delighted with the profuse richness, deli- 
 cacy and beauty of the Alpine flowers. The grass of the mea- 
 dow slopes in the gorge of the Dala had a depth and power of 
 verdure, a clear, delicious greenness, that in its effect upon the 
 
28 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. vi. 
 
 mind was like that of the atmosphere in the brightest autumnal 
 morning of the year, or rather, perhaps, like the colors of the sky 
 at sunset. There is no such grass-color in the world, as that of 
 these mountain meadows. It is just the same at the verge of the 
 ice oceans of Mont Blanc. It makes you think of one of the 
 points chosen by the Sacred Poet to illustrate the divine benevo- 
 lence (and I had almost said, no man can truly understand why 
 it was chosen, who has not travelled in Switzerland), " Who 
 maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains." 
 
 And then the flowers, so modest, so lovely, yet of such deep 
 exquisite hue, enamelled in the grass, sparkling amidst it, " a 
 starry multitude," underneath such awful brooding mountain 
 forms, and icy precipices, how beautiful ! All that the Poets 
 have ever said or sung of Daisies, Violets, Snow-drops, King- 
 cups, Primroses, and all modest flowers, is here out-done by the 
 mute poetry of the denizens of these wild pastures. Such a 
 meadow slope as this, watered with pure rills from the glaciers, 
 would have set the mind of Edwards at work in contemplation 
 on the beauty of holiness. He has connected these meek and 
 lowly flowers with an image, which none of the Poets of this 
 world have ever thought of. To him the divine beauty of holi- 
 ness " made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all man- 
 mer of pleasant flowers ; all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed 
 enjoying a sweet calm, and the gentle, vivifying beams of the 
 Sun. The soul of a true Christian appears like such a little 
 white flower as we see in the spring of the year ; low and hum- 
 ble on the ground ; opening its bosom to receive the pleasant 
 beams of the Sun's glory ; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rap- 
 ture ; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy ; standing peacefully 
 and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about ; all in 
 like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the 
 Sun." 
 
 Very likely such a passage as this, coming from the soul of 
 the great theologian (for this is the poetry of the soul, and not of 
 artificial sentiment, nor of the mere worship of nature), will 
 seem to many persons, like violets in the bosom of a glacier. But 
 no poet ever described the meek, modest flowers so beautifully, 
 rejoicing in a calm rapture. Jonathan Edwards himself, with his 
 

 CHAP, vi.] ALPINE FLOWERS. 29 
 
 grand views of sacred theology and history, his living piety, and 
 his great experience in the deep things of God, was like a moun- 
 ,tain glacier, in one respect, as the " parent of perpetual streams," 
 that are then the deepest, when all the fountains of the world are 
 driest ; like, also, in another respect, that in climbing his theology 
 you get very near to heaven, and are in a very pure and bracing 
 atmosphere ; like, again, in this, that it requires much spiritual 
 labor and discipline to surmount his heights, and some care not 
 to fall into the crevasses ; and like, once more, in this, that when 
 you get to the top, you have a vast, wide, glorious view of God's 
 great plan, and see things in their chains and connections, which 
 before you only saw separate and piecemeal. 
 
30 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. vn. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Moon and the Mountains. Village of Leuk. 
 
 THE village of the Baths of Leuk is at the head of this gorge, 
 at the foot of the celebrated pass of the Gemmi. The wonders 
 of the scenery are greater than the marvels of Oriental romance ; 
 it is a totally different world from that which lies below you, that 
 where you were born. You seem to have risen to the verge 
 between the natural and the supernatural, between the visible 
 and the invisible ; or to have come to the great barriers, behind 
 which lies open " the multitudinous abyss," where Nature hides 
 her secret elemental processes and marvels. Strange enough, 
 the village in the remembrance reminds me of Nicomedia in 
 Turkey. The moon rose about eight o'clock from behind the moun- 
 tains beneath which the baths and the hamlets are situated, so 
 that we had the hour and the scene of all others in some respects 
 most beautiful. No language can describe the extraordinary 
 effect of the light falling on the mighty perpendicular crags and 
 ridges of the Gemmi on the other side, while the village itself 
 remained in darkness. It appeared as if the face of this moun- 
 tain was gradually lighting up from an inward pale fire, suffused 
 in rich radiance over it, for it was hours before we could see the 
 moon, though we could see her veil of soft light resting upon 
 those gigantic, rock-ribbed, regal barriers of nature. 
 
 There is an inexpressible solemnity to the mind in the sight 
 of those still and awful forms rising in the silent night, how 
 silently, how impressively ! Their voice is of eternity, of 
 God ; and why it is I cannot tell, but certain it is, that the deep 
 intense blue of distant mountains by day impresses the mind in 
 the same way with a sense of eternity. Vastness of material 
 masses produces the same impression on the mind as vastness of 
 time and space ; but why intensity of color should have so pecu- 
 
CHAP, vii.] MAKING HAY BY MOONLIGHT. 31 
 
 liarly sublime an effect I know not, unless it be simply from con- 
 nection with such vastness of material form. At all events the 
 mountains in these aspects do raise the mind irresistibly to God 
 and eternity, making the devout heart adore him with praise and 
 awe, and compelling even the careless heart into an unusual 
 sense of his power and glory. Sometimes the mountains seem 
 as if shouting to one another, God ! Sometimes they seem re- 
 peating in a low, deep, stilly murmur of adoration, God ! Some- 
 times they seem to stand and gaze silently at you with a look 
 that goes down into the soul, and makes the same impression, 
 God! 
 
 How different it is with men, their huts, their palaces, their 
 movements, their manners ! Often there is nothing to remind you 
 of God, save the profane oath, in which his dread, sacred name 
 drops from the lips in blasphemy ; that fearful oath, which on 
 the continent of Europe has given a name to Englishmen, and 
 of which no European language can afford a rival or a parallel. 
 
 This beautiful night, after the moon was fully risen, I could 
 not resist the temptation, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, 
 to walk down alone to that deep, wild, fir-clad gorge, through 
 which the torrent of the Dala was thundering, that I might ex- 
 perience the full and uninterrupted impression of moonlight and 
 solitude in so grand a scene. As I passed down from the village 
 through the meadow slopes toward the black depths of the ravine, 
 one or two peasants were busied, though it was near midnight, 
 silently mowing the grass ; I suppose both because of the cool- 
 ness of the night, and to secure their hay during the pleasant 
 weather. A beautiful grey mist, like the moonlight itself, lay 
 upon the fields, and the sweep of the scythes along the wet grass 
 was the only sound that rose upon the perfect stillness of the 
 atmosphere, save the distant subterranean thunder of the falls of 
 the Dala, buried in the depths of the chasm. Looking down into 
 those depths amidst the din and fury of the waters, the sublimity 
 of the impression is greatly heightened by the obscurity ; and 
 then looking upward along the forest of dark verdure that clothes 
 the overhanging mountain, how still, how beautiful in the moon- 
 light are those rising terraces of trees ! They seem as if they 
 loo had an intelligent spirit, and were watching the night and 
 
32 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. vn. 
 
 enjoying its beauty. My friend was sound asleep at the inn. 
 Who was wisest, he or I ? Considering the fatigues of the day, 
 and those to be encountered on the morrow, there was great wis- 
 dom in the act of sleeping. But then again it is to be considered 
 that any night is good for sleeping, while such a night as this for 
 waking might not again be enjoyed, with all its accessories, in a 
 man's lifetime. 
 
 These laborers, that were but making hay, could toil all night, 
 and the day after go to their work as usual. But all the hay in 
 Switzerland would not be worth the impulse that might be gained 
 from such a night as this, were the soul only prepared for it. 
 Night and the stars ! Silence and voices deep, calling the soul 
 to hear them, not the sense ! What music were it, if those living 
 lights, waxing in splendor, would let us hear, as Dante saith, 
 " the chiming of their angelic bells." 
 
 " One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine, 
 And light us deep into the Deity : 
 How boundless in magnificence and might ! 
 what a confluence of ethereal fires 
 From urns unnumbered, down the steep of heaven ! 
 My heart at once it humbles and exalts, 
 Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies. 
 Bright legions swarm unseen, and sing, unheard 
 By mortal ear, the glorious Architect, 
 In this, his universal Temple, hung 
 With lustres, with innumerable lights, 
 That shed religion on the soul, at once 
 The Temple arid the Preacher ! 
 
 Who sees Him not, 
 
 Nature's controller, author, guide, and end ? 
 Who turns his eye on nature's midnight face 
 But must inquire, What hand behind the scene, 
 What arm Almighty put these wheeling globes 
 In motion, and wound up the vast machine ? 
 Who rounded in his palm these spacious orbs ? 
 Who bowled them flaming through the dark profound, 
 Numerous as glittering gems of morning dew, 
 Or sparks from populous cities in a blaze, 
 And set the bosom of old Night on fire ?" 
 
 What grand lines are these ! The sublimity of Young rises 
 sometimes higher than that of Dante, as his devotion is more direct 
 
CHAP, vii.] NIGHT THOUGHTS. 33 
 
 and scriptural. The grandeur of that image or conception of 
 the spacious orbs bowled flaming through the dark profound, nume- 
 rous as glittering gems of morning dew, could scarcely be exceed- 
 ed. It is like the image of the same great Poet, of Old Time 
 sternly driving his ploughshare o'er Creation. The Poem of the 
 Night Thoughts is full of great and rich materials for the mind 
 and heart ; it is one of the best demonstrations in our language 
 of the absurdity of that strange idea of Dr. Johnson, that devo- 
 tion is not a fit subject for poetry ! Let the Christian stand at 
 midnight beneath the stars, with mountains round about him, and 
 if the influences of the scene are rightly appreciated, though he 
 may be no Poet, he will feel that Prayer, Praise, and the highest 
 Poetry are one. 
 
 " In every storm that either frowns or falls 
 What an asylum has the soul in prayer ! 
 And what a Fane is this, in which to pray ! 
 And what a God must dwell in such a Fane !" 
 
 NIGHT THOUGHTS, IX. 
 
 PART II. 
 
34 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGPRAU. [CHAP. vm. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Baths of Leuk. 
 
 THE village or hamlet of the baths* is a place of about three 
 hundred inhabitants, whose clusters of wooden nests hang to 
 the mountains at an elevation of more than 4500 feet above the 
 level of the sea. The bathing houses and inns are spacious, 
 crowded for some six weeks in July and August, deserted almost 
 all the rest of the year, and shut up and abandoned from October 
 to May. Three times since their establishment in the sixteenth 
 century they have been overwhelmed by Avalanches, though to 
 the eye of a stranger in the summer, their position does not seem 
 to be of imminent peril. But the scenery is of an extreme 
 grandeur, a glorious region, where the sublimities of nature com- 
 bine to elevate the mind, at the same time that the body comes 
 to be healed of its infirmities. These healing springs, wherever 
 they occur, are proofs of the Divine benevolence ; may they not 
 be regarded as peculiarly so, when placed in the midst of scenes 
 so adapted to raise the thoughts to heaven ? 
 
 But what invalid here ever thinks of the scenery who has to 
 spend eight hours a day immersed and steaming in hot water ? 
 The grand spring bursts forth like a little river close to the bath- 
 house, of as great heat as 124 Fahrenheit, and supplies the great 
 baths, which are divided into wooden tanks, about twenty feet 
 square, four in each building, where men, women, and children 
 bathe indiscriminately, clad in long woollen gowns. There they 
 sit for hours in the water, some two or three weeks together, four 
 hours at breakfast and four hours after dinner. It is very droll 
 and very disgusting to look at them, floating about, such a motley 
 crew, in such a vulgar mixture, some fifteen or twenty in each 
 tank. It is surprising that persons of either sex, with any refine- 
 ment of feeling, can submit to such a process, so coarse, so pub- 
 
CHAP, viii.] BATHS OF LEUK. 35 
 
 lie, so indelicate ; but they say that this social system is resorted 
 to, because of the tedium of being obliged to spend six or eight 
 hours a day in the water ; so they make a regular soiree of it, a 
 sort of Fourier affair, having all things common, and entertaining 
 each other as much as possible. 
 
 The traveller stands on a wooden bridge, and gazes at the 
 watery community in amazement, looking narrowly for fins ; but 
 he sees nothing but groups of human heads, emerging and bob- 
 bing about like the large corks to a fishing net, among which are 
 floating a score of little wooden tables with books, newspapers, and 
 so forth, for the occupation of said heads, or tea and coffee with 
 toast, or a breakfast a la fourchette, for the supply of the bodies 
 belonging to them. Some are reading, others amphibiously 
 lounging, others coquetting at leisure with a capricious appetite, 
 others playing chess, all up to the chin in hot water. Inveterate 
 chess-players would make excellent patients in these baths. 
 Without some occupation of that nature, one would think there 
 must be no little danger of falling asleep and getting drowned. 
 One of the bathing houses is for the poor, who are admitted free 
 of expense ; and here it is not so surprising to see them all par- 
 boiling together ; but that the better rank should suffer such a 
 system of vulgarity and publicity, seems incredible. 
 
 It is principally from France and Switzerland that the visitors 
 come, and they have to be steeped three weeks in the water for 
 cure. Eight hours daily in the baths and two in bed, together 
 with the eight or ten spent in sleep, nearly finish the twenty-four 
 of our diurnal existence. There are no provisions for private 
 baths, so that the necessity of making a tete-a-tete of some fifteen 
 or twenty together is inexorable. And, after all, there may be 
 no more want of refinement in a social Neptunian pic-nic of this 
 sort, than there is in tripping over the white sands at Brighton, 
 or floating in the surf on the beach at Newport, Naiad-like, in 
 companies. 
 
36 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. ix. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Pass of the Gemmi. Trials of Faith. 
 
 FROM the baths we set our faces, and my companion the face of 
 his mule, to traverse the pass of the Gemmi, in many respects 
 the grandest and most extraordinary pass in all Switzerland. If 
 the builders of Babel had discovered this mountain, methinks 
 they would have abandoned their work, and set themselves to 
 blast a corkscrew gallery in the rock, by which to reach heaven. 
 No language can describe the sublime impression of its frowning 
 circular ridges, its rocky, diademic spheroids, if I may so speak, 
 sweeping up, one after another, into the skies. The whole valley 
 is surrounded by ranges of regal crags, but the mountain of the 
 Gemmi, apparently absolutely inaccessible, is the last point to 
 which you would turn for an outlet. A side gorge that sweeps 
 up to the glaciers and snowy pyramids flashing upon you in the 
 opposite direction, is the route which you suppose your guide is 
 going to take, and visions of pedestrians perilously scaling icy 
 precipices, or struggling up to the middle through ridges of snow, 
 begin to surround you, as the prospects of your own experience in 
 this day's expedition. So convinced was I that the path must go 
 out in that direction, that I took a short cut, which I conceived 
 would bring me again into the mule-path at a point under the 
 glaciers, but after scaling precipices, and getting lost in a wood 
 of firs in the valley, I was glad to rejoin my friend with the 
 guide, and to clamber on in pure ignorance and wonder. The 
 valley is what is called a perfect cul-de-sac, having no opening 
 except where you entered from the Valley of the Rhone, and 
 running up blunt, a little beyond the Baths of Leuk, against one 
 of the loftiest perpendicular barriers of rock in all the Alpine 
 recesses. It was therefore not possible to imagine where we 
 should emerge, and not being able to understand clearly the dia- 
 
CHAP, ix.] TRIALS OF FAITH. 37 
 
 lect of our guide, we began to think that he did not himself know 
 the way. 
 
 Now what a striking symbol is this, of things that sometimes 
 take place in our spiritual pilgrimage. We are often brought to 
 a stand, hedged up and hemmed in by the providence of God, so 
 that there seems no way out. A man is sometimes thrown into 
 difficulties, in which he sits down beginning to despair, and says 
 to himself, Well, this time it is all over with me ; like Sterne's 
 Starling, or worse, like Bunyan's Man in the Cage, he says, I 
 can't get out. Then, when God has driven him from all self- 
 confidence and self- resource, a door opens in the wall, and he 
 rises up and walks at liberty, praising God. 
 
 Sometimes he says within himself, " This cannot be the path 
 of duty ; the mountain is too high, too inaccessible ; there is no 
 possibility of scaling it ; the undertaking, Sir Conscience, that 
 you point out to me by God's Word, is desperate. The path 
 must go this other way ; I am sure it must." Alas, poor pilgrim, 
 try it, if you dare ! Leave the Guide, whose dialect you think 
 you can't understand, though Conscience all the while under- 
 stands it, and too soon you will get lost amidst woods and preci- 
 pice.s ; and well for you it will be, if you do not fall over some 
 fearful crag, or wander so far and so irretrievably, that no longer 
 the voice of your Guide can be heard, and you stumble upon the 
 dark mountains, till you are lost in the congregation of the dead. 
 Remember By Path Meadow, and Giant Despair's Castle, and 
 come back, yea, haste back, if you are going where the Word 
 of God does not go before you. Let your feet be towards the 
 King's highway, and the mountain you will find is accessible, 
 and the Lions are chained. 
 
 Shall I pursue the simile any farther ? I will ; for it makes 
 me think of the course of some men, who will not suffer them- 
 selves to be led across the great mysteries of God's Word, but 
 endeavor to wind their way out of the gulf without scaling the 
 mountain. They say it is utterly impossible, it is irrational, it 
 cannot be, there must be some other mode of explaining these 
 passages, than that of admitting the stupendous, inexplicable 
 mystery and miracle, which they bear upon the face of them. 
 So they would carry you round by side galleries, across drifts of 
 
38 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. ix. 
 
 snowy reasoning, as cold and as deceitful as the crusts of glitter- 
 ing ice, that among the Alps cover great fissures, where, if you 
 step, you sink and are out of sight for ever. Keep to the ap- 
 pointed path, over the mountain, for there alone are you* safe. 
 It is the path of Faith, faith in God's Word, faith in God's mys- 
 teries, faith in God's Spirit, faith in God's Son. Sometimes it is 
 the path of Faith without reasoning, and you must take it, be- 
 cause God says so ; indeed that great Word, GOD SAITH, is the 
 highest of all reasoning, and if your reasoning goes against it, 
 your reasoning is a lie. 
 
 Now have you tried your own way, and found it deceitful and 
 ruinous ? And are you ready to follow your Guide, as an ignorant 
 little child, in all simplicity ? This is well, and God sometimes 
 suffers us to have our own way, to take it for a while, that we 
 may find by sore experience that his way is the best. Your path 
 seems to be shut up, but if he points it out, you may be sure that 
 he will open it. As to the children of Israel, when brought 
 to a stand at the verge of the Red Sea, so he says to you, Go 
 forward ! 
 
 The mysteries in God's Word, and the practical difficulties in 
 our Pilgrimage, are like these mountain-passes. If you refuse 
 to clamber, you must stay in the gulf, or go, by apostasy, back- 
 ward, for there is no other way out. And if you will not accept 
 the path, walking by Faith, not Sight, then you will never see 
 the glory that is to be enjoyed on the summit. The great funda- 
 mental truths of God's Word, the Resurrection, the Atonement, 
 the Triune Mysteries of the Godhead, the Eternity and Provi- 
 dence of God, the Deity and Grace of Christ, the Work of the 
 Holy Spirit, these are all mountain passes, to be crossed only 
 by Faith ; but when you so cross them, then what glory ! O what 
 glory ! So you rise to Heaven ; while they who deny them, are 
 creeping and feeling their way as dull materialists, blindfold grop- 
 ing in the gulf below. 
 
 Well ! let us go on, after our digression, in the strange path of 
 the Gemmi. My steady companion, in 'this case, answered to 
 the principle of Faith, and I, of self-willed Reason. But I came 
 back, before I got beyond reach of his powerful voice shouting 
 to me, and we advanced together. 
 
CHAP, x.] PASS OF THE GEMMI. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Pass of the Gemmi. Successive splendors of the view. 
 
 IT is a scene as singular as it is sublime. You inarch up towards 
 the base of the mountain ; you look above you, around you, but 
 there is no way ; you are utterly at a loss. You still advance 
 to within three or four feet of the smooth perpendicular rock, and 
 still there is no outlet. Is there any cave, or subterranean pas- 
 sage, or are you to be hoisted, mules and all, by some invisible 
 machinery over the crags ? Thus musing, your guide suddenly 
 turns to the left, and begins a zigzag ascent, where you never 
 dreamed it was possible, over a steep slope of crumbling rocky 
 fragments, that are constantly falling from above, by which at 
 length you reach a ridgy winding shelf fcr wrinkle on the face of 
 the mountain, not visible from below. Here you might have 
 seen from the valley parties of travellers circling the rocky wall, 
 as if they were clinging to it sideways by some supernatural 
 power, and you may see others far above you coming down. 
 Sometimes sick persons are borne on litters down these preci- 
 pices to visit the baths, having their eyes blindfolded to avoid see- 
 ing the perils of the way. 
 
 It is a lovely day, most lovely. Far and near you can see 
 with dazzling distinctness ; trees and crags, streams, towns, mea- 
 dowslopes, mountain outlines, and snowy summits. And now every 
 step upwards increases your wonder and admiration. You rise 
 from point to point, commanding a wider view at every turn. 
 You overhang the most terrible precipices. You scale the face 
 of crags, where narrow galleries have been blasted like grooves, 
 leaving the mountain arching and beetling over you above, while 
 there is no sort of barrier between you and the almost immea- 
 surable gulf below. It is a passage which tries a man's nerves. 
 My companion did not dare to ride, but dismounted, and placing 
 
40 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. x. 
 
 the guide outside between him and the outer edge of the grooves, 
 crept along, leaning against the mountains, and steadying himself 
 with his hands. The tremendous depths, without fence or pro- 
 tection, made him sick and dizzy. Once or twice I had the 
 same sensation, but generally enjoyed the sense of danger, which 
 adds so greatly to the element of sublimity. 
 
 This ascent, so perpendicular, yet by its zigzags so gradual, 
 affords a constant change and enlargement of view. The little 
 village and baths of Leuk look like a parcel of children's toys 
 in wax, it is so far below you. Now you can see clear across 
 the Dala valley with its villages and mountains, clear down into 
 the valley of the Simplon. Now the vast snowy range of moun- 
 tains on the Italian side begins to be visible. Now you can dis- 
 tinctly count their summits, you may tell all their names, you 
 gaze at them as a Chaldean shepherd at the beauty of the stars, 
 you can follow their ranges from Monte Rosa and the Velan even 
 to the Grand St. Bernard, where the hoary giant keeps guard 
 over the lovely Val D'Aoste, and locks the kingdom of Italy. 
 How dazzling, how beautiful are their forms ; verily, you could 
 sit and watch them all day, if the sun would stay with them, and 
 not tire of their study. 
 
 But now a zigzag takes you again in the opposite direction, 
 and again you enter a tremendous gorge, by a blasted hanging 
 gallery, where the mountains on either side frown like two black 
 thunder-clouds about to discharge their artillery. On the other 
 side of this awful gulf, the daring chamois hunters have perched 
 a wooden box for a sort of watch-tower beneath a shelf in the 
 precipice, utterly inaccessible except by a long pole from beneath, 
 with a few pegs running through it, in imitation of a dead pine. 
 An inexperienced chamois might take it for an eagle's nest, and 
 here a man may lie concealed with his musket, till he has op- 
 portunity to mark his prey. How majestically that bird below 
 us cleaves the air, and comes sailing up the gorge, and now cir- 
 cles the gigantic cliffs of the Geinmi, and sweeps away from us 
 into the sky ! Would it not be a glorious privilege to be able in 
 like manner ourselves to sail off into liquid air, and mount up to 
 heaven ? Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away 
 and be at rest. So we shall be able to soar, from glorious peak 
 
 
CHAP, x.] REMARKABLE ECHO. 41 
 
 to peak, from one part of God's universe to another, when clothed 
 upon with our spiritual body, our house which is from heaven. 
 
 Where we stand now there is a remarkable echo from the 
 depths of the gorge and the opposite face of the mountain. You 
 hear the sound of your footsteps and your voices, as if another 
 party were travelling on the other side. You shout, and your 
 words are twice distinctly reverberated and repeated. In some 
 places this Echo is as if there were a subterranean concert, 
 muffled and deep, of strange beings, creatures of wild dreams, 
 the Seven Sleepers awakened, or people talking in a madhouse. 
 The travellers shout, then hold their breath, and look at one 
 another, and listen with a sense of childish wonder to the strange, 
 clear, bold answers, out-spoken across the grim black gorge in 
 the mountain. The Poet Wordsworth seems to have heard the 
 full cry of a hunting pack, rebellowing to the bark of a little 
 dog, that took it into its head to wake the Echo. Thence came 
 that fine sonnet from his tour on the Continent. 
 
 " WHAT Beast of Chase hath broken from the cover ? 
 Stern GEMMI listens to as full a cry, 
 As multitudinous a harmony, 
 As e'er did ring the heights of Latmos over, 
 When, from the soft couch of her sleeping Lover, 
 Upstarting, Cynthia skimmed the mountain dew 
 In keen pursuit, and gave, where'er she flew, 
 Impetuous motion to the stars above her. 
 A solitary wolf-dog, ranging on 
 
 Through the bleak concave, wakes this wondrous chime 
 Of aery voices locked in unison, 
 Faint far off near deep solemn and sublime ! 
 So from the body of a single deed 
 A thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed !" 
 
 This last comparison unexpectedly reveals one of the most 
 impressive thoughts ever bodied forth by Wordsworth's Imagina- 
 tion. There is an eternal Echo both to the evil and the good of 
 our actions. The Universe is as a Gallery, to take up the report 
 and send it back upon us, in music sweet as the celestial harmo- 
 nies, or in crashing thunder of wrath upon the soul. Evil deeds, 
 above all, have their Echo. The man may be quiet for a season, 
 and hear no voice, but Conscience is yet to be roused, and he is 
 
42 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAtr. [CHAP. x. 
 
 to stand as in the centre of Eternity, and hear the reverberation 
 coming back upon him, in Remorse, Judgment, Retribution. The 
 reproduction of himself upon himself would alone be retribution, 
 the reverberation of his evil character and actions. Every man 
 is to meet this, whose evil is not purged away by Christ ; whose 
 life is not pardoned, whose soul is not cleansed, whose heart is 
 not penitent and made new by Divine Grace. 
 
 So neither the evil nor the good that men do is ever interred 
 with their bones, but lives after them. There is always going 
 on this process of reverberation, reproduction, resurrection. 
 Wherefore let the wicked man remember, when he speaks or 
 acts an evil thing, though in present secresy and silence, that he 
 is yet to hear the Echo from Eternity. 
 
 " Now ! It is gone ! Our brief hours travel post ; 
 Each with its thought or deed, its why or how. 
 But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost, 
 To dwell within thee, an Eternal Now." r 
 
 You continue your zigzag ascent, wondering where it can at 
 length end. Your mule treads with the utmost unconcern on 
 the very brink of the outjutting crags, with her head and neck 
 projecting over into the gulf, which is so deep and so sheer a 
 perpendicular, that in some places a plumb line might be thrown 
 into the valley below, near 1600 feet, almost without touching 
 the rock. It makes you dizzy to look down into the valley from 
 a much less height than this, but still you ascend, and still com- 
 mand a wider and more magnificent view of the Snowy Alps on 
 the Italian side of the Canton du Valais. You are now on a 
 level with those hanging lines of misty light, so distant and so 
 beautiful, floating over me valley of the Simplon, where the vapor 
 is suspended in hazy layers, just beneath the limit of perpetual 
 snow. Above are the snow-shining mountains, below, the grey 
 crags, forests of fir, pasturages, chalets, farms, castles, and vil- 
 lages. 
 
 * Fancy hath flung for me an airj bridge 
 Across thy long, deep Valley, furious Rhone ! 
 Arch, that here rests upon the granite ridge 
 Of Monte Rosa there on frailer stone 
 
CHAP, x.] SUMMIT OF THE PASS. 43 
 
 Of secondary birth the Jungfrau's cone ; 
 And. from that Arch, down looking on the Vale, 
 The aspect I behold of every zone ; 
 A sea of foliage tossing with the gale, 
 Blithe Autumn's purple crown, and Winter's icy mail." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 And now at length you have accomplished the ascent, and 
 reached the highest point of the pass of the Gemmi. You turn 
 with reluctance from one of the grandest views in Switzerland, 
 though you have been enjoying it for hours ; but it is always a 
 grief to quit a chain of snowy Alps in the landscape, for they 
 are like a wide view of the ocean ; it thrills you with delight 
 when you come upon them. You emerge from the gorge, pass 
 the little shed, which would be somewhat better than an umbrella 
 in a storm, walk a few steps, and what a contrast ! What a 
 scene of winter and of savage wildness and desolation ! You 
 are 7200 feet above the level of the sea. Stupendous walls and 
 needles of bare rock are shooting into the sky, adown whose 
 slopes vast fields of ever-changing snow sweep restlessly, feed- 
 ing a black lake in the centre of storm-beaten ridges of naked 
 limestone. A vast pyramid of pure white snow rises so near you 
 on the right, from behind these intervening ridges of bare rock, 
 that it seems as if a few minutes' walk might plunge you into the 
 midst of it. If you were to undertake it, you would find it a 
 day's work, across frightful ravines, and over mountains. The 
 desolation increases as you descend, till you come to the solitary 
 auberge built upon the ruins of an avalanche, the scene, it is 
 said, of one of the German poet Werner's tragedies. 
 
 You are suspicious here, though glad enough to have come to 
 a place of refreshment, because Mr. Murray, whose Guide-book 
 is the Bible of most Englishmen on the continent, has put into 
 his pages the warning that the landlord of this inn is not well 
 spoken of. You naturally expect to meet a surly, ill-looking 
 fellow, who is going to cheat you, and who might on occasion 
 murder you; but you find a pleasant looking man, who speaks 
 pleasantly, treats you kindly, and charges no more for your fare 
 than it is fairly worth ; and you pass from the place exclaiming 
 against the extreme injustice which has thus, upon the chance 
 
44 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. x. 
 
 report perhaps of some solitary, well-fed, English grumbler, 
 affixed a libel to the name of this landlord, which is sure to pre- 
 judice every traveller against him beforehand. 
 
 Well it is for the poor man, that travellers who have passed 
 the Gemmi have a sharp appetite, and cannot eat fossils, and 
 that there is no other inn but his in the desolate pass of the moun- 
 tain. This being the case, they eat, and afterwards survey the 
 character of the landlord in better humor, and then, having got 
 ready to be cheated, it is a most agreeable surprise to find that 
 there is no cheat at all, though 7000 feet above the level of the 
 sea might almost justify it, for who could be expected to keep such 
 an inn without some inordinate compensation ? There is nothing 
 that travellers ought to pay more cheerfully, than high charges 
 in such places ; but from the manner in which John Bull some- 
 times complains, you would think he was a very poor man, close 
 upon the verge of his last farthing. I have seen an Englishman 
 in a storm of rage for a charge in Switzerland, which would 
 have been three times as high in his own country, besides that 
 there he would have been obliged to pay the servants in addition, 
 no little proportion of what here the meal itself cost him. 
 
CHAP, xi.] CANTON BERNE. 45 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Canton Berne. Scripture on the houses. Truth a gooa talisman. 
 
 SOON after quitting the inn, the pasturage vegetation commences, 
 and you cross from the Roman Catholic Canton du Valais into 
 the Protestant Canton Berne ; it is impossible not to be struck 
 with the great contrast between the two regions, when you enter 
 the villages. From the poverty, filth, and ignorance in the Val- 
 ley of the Rhone you pass to abodes of comfort, neatness, and 
 intelligence. A traveller cannot shut his eyes against this con- 
 trast. He may have heard it described, and may have set it 
 down to the score of religious prejudice exaggerating the facts ; 
 but he finds the contrast to be an undeniable reality. Neither 
 can he tell how much of this difference arises from physical 
 causes, the Valley of the Rhone being subject to calamities and 
 diseases from which the Canton Berne is happily free ; nor 
 how much is owing to the contrasted system of religion and edu- 
 cation. The fact is quite beyond controversy, that the popula- 
 tion of the Canton Berne are far superior in thrift, intelligence, 
 and prosperity to that of the Canton du Valais. 
 
 I cannot say that Protestant grass is any greener than Romish, 
 or that heretical cattle are any fatter than those on the Pope's 
 side of the mountain ; but the vegetation began speedily to luxu- 
 riate as we descended, large firs began to clothe the crags, herds 
 of cows and oxen were pasturing, and the ridges of rock so 
 bare and perpendicular on the other side the pass, on this were 
 hidden under thick forests. The mountains are split asunder in 
 deep ravines, immense jagged chasms, which are fringed with 
 rich verdure, and the shade into which you enter is so deep, that 
 it looks like evening, though the sun has not much passed the 
 meridian. The side-views of the Oeschinen and Gasteren val- 
 leys, one on your right, the other on your left, as you descend to- 
 
46 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xi. 
 
 wards Kandersteg, are exceedingly impressive, both for their 
 savage grandeur and beauty. On one side you seem to look 
 through the torn rock-rifts of the pass, and over forest crowned 
 projections of the mountains, into the icy palace of Winter where 
 he reigns alone ; frosted sparkling peaks, and icy -sheeted crags, 
 and masses of pure white snow, seen through the firs, make a 
 singular wild contrast with the verdant scenery, that rises imme- 
 diately around you, and is spread out below you. On the other 
 side, the path that takes you into the Oeschinen valley winds over 
 green grassy slopes to introduce you to a lovely lake encircled 
 by precipices and glaciers, at the foot of the Blumlis Alps. 
 
 And now you arrive at Kandersteg, a scattered village in the 
 midst of a smooth grassy expanse of table land at the foot of the 
 Gemmi, about 3300 feet above the level of the sea. The change 
 in the aspect of the hamlets, from the region where you have 
 been travelling, attracts your notice. Some of the villages look 
 like New England. Nature is more kindly than in the Valley of 
 the Rhone, and the people have endeavored to keep pace with 
 her more equally. They are certainly better to do in the world, 
 and under the Canton Berne, in a freer, more cheerful, less re- 
 pressing government. 
 
 In place of the symbol of the cross, or the statue of the Virgin 
 in her niche, or the picture of the Mother and Child, the traveller 
 may see, as in some of the old houses in Edinburgh, sentences 
 from the Scriptures piously inscribed over the doors, or across 
 the outside walls of the cottages. It has a most pleasing effect 
 upon the mind, although doubtless many of the inhabitants think 
 no more of their meaning, than the Jews did of that of the scrip- 
 tural inscriptions on their broad phylacteries. Yet it is pleasant 
 to see a rim of sentences from the Word of God running round 
 the hamlet, and sometimes a stray thought may be caught by it 
 and made devotional. If there could be an outward talisman, 
 making the house secure from evil, forbidding the entrance of 
 bad spirits, 
 
 " Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt," 
 
 sweetly reminding intelligent beings of duty, and making sacred 
 things inanimate, this were it. Girt round about with Truth, 
 
CHAP. M.J CHARM OF BIBLE TRUTH. 47 
 
 what defence could equal it ? No sprinkling with holy water, no 
 spittle of priests, no anointing with oil, no forms of exorcism, 
 could so frighten the wandering imps of darkness. Then, too, 
 there is no superstition connected with it ; it is justified by, and in 
 perfect accordance with, the injunctions given to the Hebrews, 
 Thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, thou 
 shalt teach them to thy children. 
 
 It is a curious indication, that the religion of superstition and 
 will- worship resorts to all other talismans and symbols save the 
 Word of God. The Romanists, so profuse of signs and rites and 
 things pretended holy, are very sparing and cautious of this. On 
 the other hand, the Mohammedans apply themselves to sentences 
 from the Koran. The palace of the Alhambra in Spain is cov- 
 ered all over with leaves from the sayings of their prophet. The 
 religion of the Mohammedans is not afraid of its professed books 
 of inspiration ; it never enacted a law forbidding them to be read 
 in the vernacular tongue, or by the common people. The re- 
 ligion of the Romanists is afraid of the Word, and instead of 
 teaching it, conceals it, and uses all other things but that as sym- 
 bols. Here is matter for reflection. 
 
48 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xn. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Picturesque cottages, A picturesque language. Right and unright inno- 
 vation. 
 
 SOME of the Swiss cottages are extremely picturesque, espe- 
 cially here in the Oberland Alps, with their galleries running 
 round them outside, their rows of chequered windows, and their 
 low-dropping, sheltering, hospitable roofs. Sometimes the shin- 
 gles are curiously wrought with much pains-taking, and fitted 
 like the scales of some sea-creature. But in general there is not 
 the care for clustering shrubbery outside, which might add so 
 much to their beauty, and which makes many a poor cot in 
 England, when Spring has thrown its blossoming warp over them, 
 for Summer to fill up, so rich with mossy greenness. The rows 
 of yellow golden corn, hanging under the eaves of the Swiss 
 cottages, might suggest to an imaginative mind a new order of 
 architecture. 
 
 I see not why this quality of picturesqueness is not quite as 
 desirable in buildings as it is in scenery, and also in language, 
 in opinions, in literature, in the whole of life. There is much 
 more of it in every way in the Old World than in America, and 
 hence in part the romantic charm, which everything wears to the 
 eye of a Transatlantic. Why should there be so much monotony 
 with us ? Why not more originality and variety ? Is it because 
 of the irresistible despotism of associations, which are so much 
 and so usefully the type of modern society, breaking down and 
 repressing, or rather hindering the development of individuality ? 
 
 The desire to produce uniformity, when unaccompanied with 
 the idea and the love of the free and the beautiful, and unchecked 
 by a regard to the rights of others, produces despotism and mono- 
 tony ia the whole domain of life, as well as in the Church. Some 
 men would push it even into the syllabic constitution of our Ian- 
 
CHAP, xii.] INNOVATIONS. 49 
 
 guage, which they would reduce to a monotonous regularity, 
 quite undesirable, even if it could be accomplished. Why should 
 we desire to do it, any more than we should wish to put the stars 
 into strait jackets of squares or triangles, or all the trees into the 
 form of quincunxes ? There are men, Mr. Dana once said, who, 
 if they could have had the making of the universe, instead of 
 the fair vault of azure hung with its drapery of gorgeous cloud, 
 and by night studded with innumerable wild stars, would have 
 covered the sky with one vast field of dead, cold blue. 
 
 There are just such men in literature and spelling, for ever 
 thrusting their dry, bare, sapless formulas of utility before the 
 mind, telling you that nothing must be done without some reason, 
 that everything must have its place, and its place for everything, 
 and in fine, with a multitude of wise old saws and modern in- 
 stances, they come to the conclusion that the world, which has 
 gone wild and crazy in freedom and beauty, wild -above rule or 
 art, is now to be constructed over again, according to the pre- 
 cepts and analyses of their utilitarianism. Wo be to a superflu- 
 ous letter, if these men catch it caracoling and playing its pranks 
 in a word, which, though it may be none the better for its pre- 
 sence, yet, being accustomed to it, is none the worse ; away it goes 
 to the Lexicographer's watch-house, till it can be tried for vagrancy. 
 Instead of the good old word height, these men would have us 
 drop the e and spell flight, but to be consistent, both the g and the 
 h should be dropped, and the word written hyt. That would be 
 strict utilitarianism. The word pretence they would change into 
 pretense, and so with others of that family. The word theatre 
 they would print theater, and others of the same clan in like 
 manner. The expressive word haggard they would change into 
 hagard, because, forsooth, two gs are superfluous. In this at- 
 tempt at change they are going contrary to good usage, which 
 must ever be the prevailing law of language, and instead of pro- 
 ducing uniformity in the language itself (in which irregularities 
 are of little consequence, nay, sometimes add to its beauty), they 
 are causing one of the greatest evils of language, irregularity, 
 uncertainty, and lawlessness in the mode of using it. 
 
 This is owing in a great measure to Dr. Webster's unfortunate 
 PART n. 5 
 
50 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xn. 
 
 orthographical eccentricities, which have set so many spellers 
 and journeymen printers agog to imitate him. It is vexatious to 
 think of the prospect of our becoming provincialized, and as ob- 
 noxious to the charge of dialects as any county in England, when 
 heretofore we have been, as a people, so much more pure and 
 classical in our use of the English language, than the English 
 people themselves. These innovations should be resisted, nor 
 should any mere Lexicographer, nor University, nor knot of 
 critics, have it in their power to make them prevalent. A great 
 and powerful writer, like John Foster or Edmund Burke, a great 
 Poet, like Shakspeare or Milton, is a great king and creator in 
 language ; his sway is legitimate, for he enlarges the capacity of 
 his native tongue, and increases its richness and imaginative 
 power, and when the soul of genius innovates, it has some right 
 so to do. And such innovations will inevitably pass into the soul 
 of language, and become a part of its law. But the mere critic 
 and lexicographer has no right to innovate ; he is to take the 
 language as he finds it, and declare and set forth its forms ac- 
 cording to good usage ; he is out of his province, and becomes 
 an usurper, when he attempts to alter it. 
 
 These surveyors of the King's English are going about to 
 prune the old oaks of the language of all supernumerary knots, 
 leaves and branches. If there is any question as to the propriety 
 of their course, whist, they whip you out of their pocket the 
 great American Lexicographer's measuring line, and tell you 
 exactly how far the tre-e ought to grow, and that every part not 
 sanctioned by his authority must be lopped off. It were well if 
 these gentlemen were compelled to practise the same rules and 
 attempt the same innovations with the bonnets of their wives, 
 that they are attempting with the King's English. Let them cut 
 off every supernumerary ribbon, and shape the head-dress of the 
 ladies by square and compass, and not by the varieties of taste, 
 and in this enterprise they would find somewhat more of dif- 
 ficulty in carrying out their utilitarian maxims. 
 
 The sacred word Bible our coterie of critics must needs spell 
 with a small b. This is worse than mere innovation. There is 
 a dignity and sacredness of personification connected with the 
 
CHAP, xii.] INNOVATIONS. 
 
 word Bible, which appropriately manifests itself in making the 
 term a proper name. It partakes of the sacredness of the name 
 of God, and ought always to be written with a capital B, for the 
 usage has obtained, as a matter of religious reverence, and a 
 good and venerable usage it is. 
 
 We shall have a grand world by and by, when it is all a dead 
 level. Every mountain is to come down, and every valley to be 
 raised, and a utilitarian railroad is to run straight across the 
 world ; an embargo is to be laid on all winding ways ; the trees 
 are to have just so ma^yMeaves, and no more the oaks are not 
 to be suffered to sport any more knots ; the rose-bfcshes are Jto 
 put forth no more buds than the essence-makers declare to be 
 wanted; our prayers ^are to have only so many words, and if 
 any minister appears in the pulpit without a white neck-cloth, or 
 a surplice so many inches long, he is to be suspended and excom- 
 municated. All our hymns are to undergo^a revision, and to be 
 cleansed of all hard and naughty words, and pruned of all super- 
 numerary stanzas, and a fine is to be laid upon every clergyman 
 who shall give out more than four. 
 
 The corps of revisers would do well for awhile to let other 
 men's productions alone, and to leave the English language in 
 the hands of Addison and Goldsmith, Shakspeare, Cowper, and 
 our Translation of the Bible. Some poet-pedlars are especially 
 fond of tinkering with old hymns, thinking they can solder up 
 the rents in Watts and Cowper. Walker's Rhyming Dictionary 
 and Webster's great Lexicon might constitute their whole stock 
 in trade. Methinks we can hear them bawling from the wooden 
 seat of their cart, " Any old hymns to mend, old hymns to 
 mend ?" This tinkered ware will not last. We should almost 
 as soon think of adopting wooden nutmegs, at the instigation of 
 the pedlars " down east," instead of the old-fashioned genuine 
 spices of Morgenland. But alas, the fictitious and the genuine 
 have got so mingled up by generation after generation of menders, 
 that poets like Cowper and Watts would find it difficult them- 
 selves, in some cases, to say which was their own.version. The 
 same is the case with some of the best old tunes in music, ground 
 down to suit the barrel organs of new composers. O that men 
 would leave some of the old stones with mosses on them ! 
 
52 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xn. 
 
 What has all this to do, you are asking, with Kandersteg and 
 the Swiss hamlets ? We have made a digression, it must be 
 acknowledged, but the way back is not difficult. It is clearly 
 manifest that picturesqueness is as desirable a quality in language 
 and literature as it is in trees and houses. And let us remember 
 that the utmost simplicity is perfectly consistent with this quality 
 of picturesqueness. If we must change our language, let it not 
 be by making it more bare, but richer and more simple. Men 
 often mistake barrenness for simplicity, but there'is no necessary 
 relationship between the two. A bare naked man, we take it, 
 has no more simplicity than a decently dressed gentleman. The 
 bald, staring, red front of a brick house on a dusty street is not 
 half so simple an object, as a pretty cottage with verandahs and 
 honeysuckles. It is not the things which are omitted, but those 
 which are wisely retained, that constitute true simplicity. The 
 simplicity of words is not to be judged by the equilibrium of 
 syllables, or the balance of vowels and consonants, nor is lan- 
 guage to be judged as the shopkeepers would measure tape by 
 the yard, or carpets by the figures. It must grow as the trees 
 do, with the same variety and freedom, under the same law of 
 picturesque and not immutable vitality. 
 
CHAP, xiii.] BLUMLIS ALP AT SUNSET. 53 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Kandersteg. Frutigen. The Blumlis Alp. Lake and Village of Thun. 
 
 IT was early enough in the afternoon to reach Thun, by taking a 
 char, the same evening, and I was sufficiently tired lor the day, 
 and quite well disposed for a ride through the lovely valley of 
 Frutigen, still far below us. A few miles from Kandersteg we 
 found ourselves on the outer edge of the spreading farms of that 
 village, a most sudden and romantic contrast, to one stepping 
 down from the icy top and rough sides of the Gemmi. 
 
 " Who loves to lie with me, 
 Under the greenwood tree, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither ; 
 Here shall he see 
 No Enemy 
 But Winter and rough weather." 
 
 Here shall you see Summer and Winter conversing together, with 
 but a wall between them, as a fair girl on an errand of mercy 
 might stand in the sweet open air outside a prison, and converse, 
 through the grated black window, with a savage, shut up criminal, 
 with wild eyes and matted hair. By and by the Savage will break 
 prison, and come down into the grassy plains, but this is not his 
 season of liberty. You can talk with him, and hear his fierce 
 voice, and look at his icy fingers, without his touching you. 
 
 Turning from Kandersteg and the Gemmi, you overlook at 
 once the long descending vale, all the way to where it ends at 
 Frutigen, with the spires and white houses of that village shining 
 in the distant evening sun. Is not the view quite enchanting ? 
 Nearly at right angles with the gorge down which you are de- 
 scending, lies the now concealed valley of Frutigen, one of the 
 richest deep inclosures of the Alps. And now it opens upon us. 
 We lose the Gemmi and the woods and roaring brooks of Kan- 
 
54 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xm. 
 
 dersteg, and turn down towards the more open face of a world so 
 beautiful. 
 
 Our drive through the vale brought us full upon the view of 
 the snowy Blumlis Alp at sunset. What a form of majesty and 
 glory ! How he flings the flaming mantle of the evening sun 
 down upon us, as if he were himself about to ascend in fire from 
 earth to heaven ! 
 
 " So like the Mountain, may we grow more bright, 
 
 From unimpeded commerce with the Sun, 
 . At the approach of all involving night." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Nothing earthly can be more glorious than such a revelation. 
 Meantime, as we rode into the twilight of the Vale, there came 
 and went, between the trees and the mountains, through which 
 we looked into the western heavens, a sky, that seemed for a 
 season to be growing brighter, as we were getting darker, a sky, 
 as the same Poet describes it, 
 
 " Bright as the glimpses of Eternity, 
 To saints accorded in their dying hour." 
 
 So shone the Blumlis Alp. But we had hardly done admiring 
 the crimson tints on that grand and mighty range, when turning 
 from this valley and passing the lovely entrance of the Simmen- 
 thal, we came upon the borders of the Lake of Thun, and beheld 
 suddenly the full moon rising behind the snowy ranges of the 
 Bernese Alps, and gilding them with such mild, cloudless efful- 
 gence, that nothing could be more beautiful. They were distinct 
 and shining, and so soft and white, so grand and varied in their 
 outlines, that the sudden vision beneath the sailing moon seemed 
 like a trance or dream of some eternal scenery. For the hori- 
 zon, and the deep air above it, glowed like a pale liquid flame, 
 and in this atmosphere the mountains were set, like the founda- 
 tions of the Celestial City. Then we had the Lake, with the 
 moonlight reflected from it in a long line of brightness, and 
 amidst the beauty of this scenery, our day's excursion was ended 
 by our entrance into Thun. 
 
CHAP, xni ] LAKE OF THUN. 55 
 
 Now it would scarcely be possible in all Switzerland to fill a 
 day with a succession of scenes of more extraordinary grandeur 
 and sublimity, softness and loveliness. Gcd's goodness has pro- 
 tected us from danger, and shielded us from harm in the midst 
 of danger, unworthy that we are of his love. How have we 
 wished for the dear ones at home to be with us, enjoying these 
 glories ! And is not the goodness of God peculiarly displayed, 
 in giving us materials and forms of such exciting sublimity and 
 beauty to gaze upon in the very walls of our earthly habitation ? 
 What a grand discipline for the mind, in these mighty forms of 
 nature, and for the heart too, if rightly improved, with its affec- 
 tions. These mountains are a great page in our natural the- 
 ology : they speak to us of the power and glory of our Maker. 
 And for the food and enkindling of the imagination they are in 
 the world-creation what such a work as the Paradise Lost is in 
 the domain of poetry ; they are what a book of great and sug- 
 gestive thoughts is to a sensitive mind ; they waken it up and 
 make it thrill with great impulses ; and as a strain of grand un- 
 earthly music, a thunder-burst of sound, or as the ringing of the 
 bells of the New Jerusalem permitted to become audible, they 
 put the soul itself in motion like an inward organ, and set it to 
 singing in the choral universal harmony. 
 
 The next day after this memorable excursion opened with a 
 morning cloudy and misty, but it was clear again at ten. We 
 are at the Pension Baumgarten, in the picturesque town of Thun, 
 under the shadow of a green mountain, with the Lake to the 
 right, the town before us, and the clear rapid Aar shooting like 
 an arrow from the Lake, under old bridges, and past houses and 
 battlements, as the crystal Rhone from the Lake at Geneva. 
 There are about 5000 inhabitants, with a noble old Feudal Castle 
 of the twelfth century towering on a steep, house-clad hill in the 
 centre of the village, and an antique venerable church nearly as 
 lofty. From the church-yard tower and terrace, where I am 
 jotting a few dim sketches in words, you have a magnificent 
 view of the Lake and the Alps. Parties of visitors, most of them 
 English, are constantly coming and going at this spot. The 
 Lake stretches before you about ten miles long, between lovely 
 green gardens and mountain-ranges fringing it, with the flashing 
 
56 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xm. 
 
 snowy summits and glaciers of the Jungfrau, Finster-Aarhorn, 
 Eigher, and Monch filling the view at its extremity. On the 
 plains of Thun the troops from the various Swiss Cantons are at 
 this moment encamped for review, and passing through a variety 
 of evolutions. 
 
 How like the first garden are the delicious vales and lakes 
 hidden among the mountains ! The Poet Cowley observes, as 
 indicating to us a lesson of happiness, that the first gift of God 
 to man was a garden, even before a wife ; gardens first, the gift 
 of God's love, cities afterwards, the work of man's ambition. 
 
 " For well he knew what place would best agree 
 With innocence and with felicity : 
 
 And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain, 
 
 If any part of either yet remain : 
 If any part of either we expect, 
 This may our judgment in the search direct, 
 
 GOD the first Garden made, and the first city, CAIN." 
 
CHAP, xiv.] THUN TO INTERLACHEN. 57 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 m 
 Thun to Interlachen. Interlachen to Lauterbrunnen. Bible in Schools. 
 
 SEEING that I am to be a solitary pedestrian, from Thun through 
 the Oberland Alps as far as Lucerne, my friend being bound 
 homewards through Berne for England, I must make the most of 
 this continued lovely weather ; and since there is nothing in 
 Thun to detain me, unless I were fond of looking at the crowds 
 of gay and care-defying visitors, coming and going, in whom, 
 being strangers, I feel no personal interest, and they none in me, 
 I must even start to-day in the little iron steamer of the lake for 
 Neuhaus. I could not persuade my friend to go farther, for he 
 was continually thinking of his wife and children, looking to- 
 wards home in just the state to have become a pillar of salt. In- 
 wardly mourning, he dragged at each remove a lengthening 
 chain. Besides, a careless herdsman on the mountains had 
 struck him on the leg with a stone intended for one of his unruly 
 cattle, and he remembered, years ago, how one of his classmates, 
 with whom he was then travelling in Switzerland, was laid on a 
 sick bed for weeks, in consequence of a similar hurt not attended 
 to. So between the sweet domestic fire-side, and the lame leg, 
 he was compelled to turn his face homewards. I parted from 
 him with great regret, and resumed my pilgrimage alone. 
 
 The sail from Thun to Neuhaus, at the other end of the Lake, 
 needs the sun upon the mountains, if you would have the full 
 glory of the landscape. For us it shone upon the Lake and on 
 its borders, but on the distant Alps the clouds rested in such 
 fleecy volumes, like a troop of maidens hiding the bride, that it 
 was only at intervals the mountains were revealed to us. Land- 
 ing at Neuhaus, you may go in a diligence, omnibus, hackney 
 coach, mail carriage, or any way you please that is possible, a 
 couple of miles to Unterseehen, a brown old primitive village ; 
 
58 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xiv. 
 
 and a little farther to Interlachen, which is a large English board- 
 ing house, with streets running through it, shaded with great 
 walnut trees, and paraded by troops of dawdling loungers and 
 lodgers, with here and there a sprinkling of Swiss natives. It 
 is beautifully situated in the midst of a large plain, about mid- 
 way between the Lakes of Thun and Brientz, both these Lakes 
 being visible from a hill amidst the meadow behind Interlachen, 
 with all the lovely intervening scenery and villages. Going from 
 Neuhaus to Interlachen, you are reminded of the passage from 
 Lake George to Lake Champlain. The verdure and foliage of 
 the valley, to where it passes from meadow to mountain, is rich 
 beyond description. It becomes really magnificent as it robes 
 the stupendous mountain masses in such dark rich hues. 
 
 From Interlachen the way to Lauterbrunnnen lies through one 
 of the most beautiful valleys in Switzerland. Entering it from 
 the plain, we had a noble view of the Jungfrau rising with its 
 eternal snows behind ridges of the most beautiful verdure, now 
 veiled and now revealed from its misty shroud. The moun- 
 tain torrent Lutschinen thunders down a savage gorge between 
 forest-clad slopes and precipices, along which you pass from the 
 villages of Wylderschwyl and Mulhinen for about two miles, 
 when the valley opens into two deep ravines, one on the left, run- 
 ning to Grindlewald, the other on the right to Lauterbrunnen, 
 each traversed by a roaring stream that falls into the Lutschinen. 
 You may go either to Lauterbrunnen or Grindlewald and back 
 again to Interlachen in a few hours, having witnessed some of 
 the sublimest scenery in Switzerland ; but the grand route is 
 through Lauterbrunnen across the Wengern Alps, down into the 
 valley of Grindlewald, and thence across the Grand Scheideck 
 down into Meyringen, from whence you may go to the Lake 
 Brientz on one side, or across the pass of the Grimsel on the 
 other. 
 
 My German guide from Interlachen was very intelligent, and 
 being an inhabitant of the village of Muhlinen, he communicated 
 to us many interesting particulars. He told us of the schools of 
 his native village, and among other things how each parent pays 
 five batz, or fifteen cents, in the winter, and three in the summer, 
 for each child's schooling, and how in the winter the children go 
 
CHAP, xiv.] RELIGIOUS SCHOOL TEACHING. 59 
 
 to school in the morning from eight to twelve, then home to din- 
 ner, then in the afternoon from one to three ; but in the summer 
 only from eight to eleven in the morning at school, and then the 
 rest of the day to work. He told us also how the school had 
 two masters and one mistress, besides the clergyman of the parish, 
 who takes the children for religious instruction two hours a-day. 
 
 Upon my wcfrd (the traveller may say to himself) here is a 
 good, wise, time- honored provision. These primitive people are 
 old-fashioned and Biblical enough, to think that religious instruc- 
 tion ought to be as much an element of education, and as con- 
 stant and unintermitted, as secular. They are right, they are 
 laying foundations for stability, prosperity, and happiness in their 
 little community. The world is wrong side up in this matter of 
 education, when it administers its own medicines only, its own 
 beggarly elements, its own food, and nothing higher, its own 
 smatterings of knowledges, without the celestial life of know- 
 ledge. Power it gives, without guidance, without principles. It 
 is just as if the art of ship-building should be conducted without 
 helms, and all ships should be set afloat to be guided by the winds 
 only. For such are the immortal ships on the sea of human life 
 without the Bible ; its knowledge, its principles, ought from the 
 first to be as much a part of the educated intelligent constitution, 
 as the keel or rudder is part and parcel of a well built ship. 
 
 Religious instruction, therefore, and the breath of the sacred 
 Scriptures, ought to be breathed into the child's daily life of 
 knowledge, not put off to the Sabbath, when grown children only 
 are addressed from the pulpit, or left to parents at home, who 
 perhaps themselves, in too many cases, never open the Bible. If 
 in their daily schools children were educated for Eternity as 
 well as Time, there would be more good citizens, a deeper piety 
 in life, a more sacred order and heaven-like beauty in the Re- 
 public, a better understanding of law, a more patient obedience 
 to it, nay, a prediction of it, and a conformable organization to it, 
 and an assimilation with its spirit, beforehand. 
 
 It is by celestial observations alone, said Coleridge (and it was 
 a great and profound remark), that terrestrial charts can be con- 
 structed. If our education would be one that States can live by 
 and flourish, it must be ordered in the Scriptures. What suicidal, 
 
60 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xiv. 
 
 heterogeneous, Roman madness, in the attempt to exclude the 
 Bible from our public schools ! May its authors bite themselves ! 
 
 Our guide told us moreover a very curious regulation of the 
 internal police of the school at Muhlinen, intended to keep the 
 children from playing truant, which they accomplish effectually 
 by working not upon the child's fear of the rod, or love of his 
 studies, but upon the parent's love of his money. That is to say, 
 if the children are absent, and as often as they are absent, a 
 cross is put against the parent's name, and he is made account- 
 able, and is fined, if he does not give satisfactory reason for the 
 child's absence. Of course all the whippings for playing truant 
 are administered by the parent, and therefore it being very sure, 
 if there is a fine for the parent to pay, that the amount of it will 
 be fully endorsed upon the child with a birch rod, the pupils 
 take good care to keep punctual at school. No delinquent can 
 escape, for no false excuse can be manufactured. It is a system 
 which might perhaps be very useful in other arts besides that of 
 school-keeping. 
 
 Coming up the valley to Lauterbrunnen, you cannot cease ad- 
 miring the splendid verdure that clothes the mountains on each 
 side, as well as the romantic depth and wildness of the gorge, 
 above which your road passes. Just before you enter the village 
 or hamlet, the cascade of the Staubach, at some distance beyond 
 it, comes suddenly into view, poured from the very summit of the 
 mountain, as if out of heaven, and streaming, or rather waving, 
 in a long line of foam, like Una's hair as described by Spenser, 
 or like the comet Ophiuncus in Milton ; sweeping down the per- 
 pendicular face of the mountain with indescribable grace and 
 beauty. 
 
 The rising of the moon upon this scene was beyond expression 
 lovely. The clouds had gone, and the snowy summit of the 
 Jungfrau seemed hanging over into the valley, and the moon rose 
 with a single star by her side, lending to the glaciers a rich but 
 transitory brilliancy, and shining with her solemn light, so still, 
 so solemn, down into the depths of the broad ravine, upon mea- 
 dow, rock, and torrent. From the window of my room in our 
 hotel I could see in one view this moon, the glittering Jungfrau, 
 and the foaming Staubach on the other side. The night was 
 
CHAP, xiv.] MOUNTAIN SOLITUDES. 61 
 
 very beautiful, but soon the mists rose, filling the valley, and 
 taking away from a tired traveller all apology for not going 
 immediately to bed. We had had a charming day, and 
 were once more out of the world of artificial and dawdling 
 idlers, and in the deep heart of nature's most solitary and sub- 
 lime recesses. How great, how pure, how exquisite, is the en- 
 joyment of the traveller in these mountain solitudes ! He 
 scarcely feels fatigue, but only excitement ; it is a species of 
 mental intoxication, a joyous, elevated, elastic state, which is as 
 natural an atmosphere for the mind, in these circumstances, as 
 the pure bracing mountain air is for the body. 
 
PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xv. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Staubach Cascade and Vale of Lauterbrunnen. 
 
 THE first sound I heard on waking in the morning, indeed the 
 sound that waked me, was the echoing Alpine Horn, breaking 
 the stillness of the Valley with its long drawn far off melody. 
 I threw open my window towards the East ; the sun was already 
 on the snowy summit of the Jungfrau, the air sparkling and 
 frosty, giving a sharp, decisive promise of a clear day ; and the 
 Staubach, which was such a dim and misty line of waving silver 
 in the moonlight of the evening, was clearly revealed, almost 
 like a bird of paradise, throwing itself into the air from the brow 
 of the mountain. 
 
 It is the most exquisitely beautiful of waterfalls, though there 
 are miniatures of it in the Valley of the Arve almost as beautiful. 
 You have no conception of the volume of water, nor of the 
 grandeur of the fall, until you come near it, almost beneath it ; 
 but its extreme beauty is better seen and felt at a little distance ; 
 indeed we thought it looked more beautiful than ever when we 
 saw it, about ten o'clock, from the mountain ridge on the opposite 
 side of the Valley. It is between eight and nine hundred feet in 
 height, over the perpendicular precipice, so that the eye traces its 
 course so long, and its movement is so checked by the resistance 
 of the air and the roughnesses of the mountain, that it seems 
 rather to float than to fall, and before it reaches the bottom, 
 dances down in ten thousand little jets of white foam, which all 
 alight together, as softly as a white- winged albatross on the bosom 
 of the ocean. It is as if a million of rockets were shot off in 
 one shaft into the air, and then descended together, some of them 
 breaking at every point in the descent, and all streaming down in 
 a combination of meteors. So the streams in this fall, where it 
 springs into the air, separate and hold their own as long as possi- 
 
CHAP, xv.] STAUBACH CASCADE. 63 
 
 ble, and then burst into rockets of foam, dropping down at first 
 heavily, as if determined to reach the ground unbroken, and 
 then dissolving into showers of mist, so gracefully, so beauti- 
 fully, like snow-dust on the bosom of the air, that it seems like a 
 spiritual creation, rather than a thing inert, material. 
 
 " Time cannot thin thy flowing hair, 
 
 Nor take one ray of light from thee, 
 For in our Fancy thou dost share 
 The gift of Immortality." 
 
 Its literal name is Dust-fall, and to use a very homely illustra- 
 tion, but one which may give a man, who has never seen any- 
 thing like it, some quaint idea of its appearance in part, it is as if 
 Dame Nature had poured over the precipice from her horn of 
 plenty a great torrent of dry white meal ! One should be more 
 mealy-mouthed in his figures, but if you are not satisfied with 
 this extraordinary comparison, take the more common one of a 
 long lace veil waving down the mountain ; or better still, the un- 
 common one of the Tail of the Pale Horse streaming in the wind, 
 as painted so beautifully in Lord Byron's Manfred. 
 
 " It is not noon, the sun-bow's rays still arch 
 
 The torrent with the many hues of heaven, 
 , . And roll the sheeted silver's waving column 
 O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, 
 And fling its lines of foaming light along, 
 And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, 
 The giant steed to be bestrode by Death, 
 As told in the Apocalypse." 
 
 It makes you think of many things, this beautiful fall, spring- 
 ing so fearlessly into the gulf. It is like the faith of a Christian, 
 it is like a poet's fancies, it is like a philosopher's conjectures, 
 plunging at first into uncertainty, but afterwards flowing on in a 
 stream of knowledge through the world. For so does this fall, 
 when it reaches the earth in a mere shower of mist, gather itself 
 up again in a refreshing, gurgling stream, for the meadows and 
 the plains to drink of. It may make you think of Wordsworth's 
 Helvetian Maid, the blithe Paragon of Alpine grace : 
 
64 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xv. 
 
 " Her beauty dazzles the thick wood ; 
 Her courage animates the flood ; 
 Her step the elastic greensward meets, 
 Returning unreluctant sweets, 
 The mountains, as ye heard, rejoice 
 Aloud, saluted by her voice." 
 
 Or of the " sweet Highland Girl," with her " very shower of 
 beauty ;" or of a Peri from Paradise weeping ; or of a saint 
 into Paradise entering, " having shot the gulf of death ;" or of 
 the feet upon the mountains, of them that bring the news of glad- 
 ness: 
 
 " Or of some bird or star, 
 Fluttering in woods or lifted far." 
 
 When the Poet Wordsworth approached this celebrated cas- 
 cade, he seems to have been assailed with a young troop of tat- 
 tered mendicants, singing in a sort of Alpine whoop of welcome, 
 in notes shrill and wild like those intertwined by some caverned 
 witch chaunting a love-spell. His mind was so taken up, and 
 his thoughts enthralled by this musical tribe haunting the place 
 with regret and useless pity, that his Muse left him with but just 
 one line for 
 
 " This bold, this pure, this sky-born WATERFALL !" 
 
 The traveller should see it with its rainbows, and may, if he 
 choose, read Henry Vaughan's lines before it, which may set forth 
 an image of the arches both of light and water. 
 
 " When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair ; 
 Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air ; 
 Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours 
 Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. 
 
 Bright pledge of peace and sunshine ! the sure tie 
 Of thy Lord's hand, the object of his eye ! 
 When I behold thee, though my light be dim, 
 Distant and low, I can in thine see Him, 
 Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne, 
 And minds the covenant betwixt All and One." 
 
CHAP, xv.] TASSELLED FOUNTAINS. 65 
 
 There are some thirty cascades like this pouring over the cliffs 
 in this remarkable Valley, hanging like long tassels or skeins of 
 silver thread adown the perpendicular face of the crags, and 
 seeming to dangle from the clouds, when the mist is suspended 
 over the valley. Some of them spring directly from the icy 
 glaciers, but others come from streams, which in the course of 
 the summer are quite dried up. The name of the Valley, Lau- 
 terbrunnen, is literally nothing but fountains, derived from the 
 multitude of little streams, which, after careering for some time 
 out of sight on the higher mountain summits, spring over the 
 vast abrupt wall of this deep ravine, and reach the bottom in so 
 many rainbow showers of spray. Between these prodigious 
 rock-barriers, the vale is sunk so deep, that the sun in the winter 
 does not get down into it before twelve o'clock, and then speedily 
 disappears. In the summer he stays some hours earlier and 
 longer. The inhabitants of the village are about 1350, in houses 
 sprinkled up and down along the borders of the torrent, that 
 swiftly courses through the bottom of the Valley, about 2500 feet 
 above the level of the sea. 
 
 PART n. 6 
 
66 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvi. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Wengern Alp and morning landscape and music. 
 
 AND now we leave the village, and the lovely waterfall, and rise 
 from the Valley, to cross the Wengern Alp. We are full of 
 expectation, but the scene on setting out is so indescribably beau- 
 tiful, that even if dark clouds should settle on all the rest of the 
 day, and shut out the glorious Jungfrau from our view, it would 
 have been well worth coming thus far to see only the beginning 
 of the glory. As we wind our way up the steep side of the 
 mountain, the mists are slowly and gracefully rising from the 
 depths of the Valley, along the face of the outjutting crags. It 
 seems as if the genius of nature were drawing a white soft veil 
 around her bosom. 
 
 But now, as we rise still farther, the sun, pouring his fiery 
 rays against the opposite mountain, makes it seem like a smoking 
 fire begirt with clouds. You think of Mount Sinai all in a blaze 
 with the glory of the steps of Deity. The very rocks are burn- 
 ing, and the green forests also. Then there are the white glit- 
 tering masses of the Breithorn and the Mittachshorn in the dis- 
 tance, and a cascade shooting directly out from the glacier. Up- 
 wards the mists are still curling and hanging to the mountains, 
 while below there are the clumps of trees in the sunlight, the 
 deep exquisite green of spots of unveiled meadow, the winding 
 stream, now hid and now revealed, the grey mist sleeping on the 
 tender grass, the chalets shining, the brooks murmuring, the 
 birds singing, the sky above and the earth beneath, in this " in- 
 cense breathing morn " uniting in a universal harmony of beauty, 
 and melody of praise. 
 
 " In such a season of calm weather, 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea, 
 
CHAP, xvi.] LESSONS OF NATURE. 67 
 
 Which brought us hither ; 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore !" 
 
 And in such a season, on such a height as this, in such a morn- 
 ing, away from Home, as well as in the woodbine walk at Eve, 
 that "dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home is 
 sweetest," may not the sensitive mind experience the feeling, 
 spoken of by John Foster as the sentiment of intent and devout 
 observers of the material world, " that there is through all nature 
 some mysterious element like soul, which comes, with a deep 
 significance, to mingle itself with their own conscious being ?" 
 May not such observers find in nature " a scene marked all over 
 with mystical figures, the prints and traces, as it were, of the 
 frequentation and agency of superior spirits ? They find it 
 sometimes concentrating their faculties to curious and minute 
 inspection, sometimes dilating them to the expansion of vast and 
 magnificent forms ; sometimes beguiling them out of all precise 
 recognition of material realities, whether small or great, into 
 visionary musings, and habitually and in all ways conveying 
 into the mind trains and masses of ideas of an order not to be 
 acquired in the schools, and exerting a modifying and assimi- 
 lating influence on the whole mental economy." A clear intel- 
 lectual illustration of all this, Foster well remarks, would be the 
 true Philosophy of Nature. 
 
 A philosophy like this is yet but little known and less acknow- 
 ledged. It cannot but be truth, and truth which finds utterance 
 in the highest strains of poetic inspiration, in a quiet, meditative 
 mind, like Cowper's, quiet, but not visionary, religious, not 
 vaguely and mystically sentimental, that 
 
 " One Spirit, His 
 Who wore the platted crown with bleeding brows 
 
 Rules universal nature. 
 
 The soul that sees Him, or receives, sublimed, 
 New faculties, or learns at least to employ 
 More worthily the powers she owned before ; 
 Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze 
 Of ignorance, till then she overlooked. 
 A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms 
 
68 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xvi 
 
 Terrestrial in the vast and the minute ; 
 
 The unambiguous footsteps of the God, 
 
 Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, 
 
 And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds !" 
 
 And how can an immortal being in God's world avoid acknow- 
 ledging and feeling this ? Can the soul of man be the only thing 
 that does not praise God in such a scene ? Alas, it may, if di- 
 |vine grace be not there. The landscape has his praise, but not its 
 Author. Nay, you may sometimes hear the most tremendous 
 oaths of admiration, where God's sacred name drops from the 
 lips in blistering impiety, while meek unconscious nature, all 
 undisturbed and quiet, singeth her matin hymn of gratitude and 
 love. But again, you may see the eye of the gazer suffused 
 with tears of ecstasy, and if you could look into the heart, you 
 would see the whole being ascending with the choral harmony 
 of nature, in a worship still more sacred and holy than her own. 
 God be praised for the gift of his Spirit ! What insensible, stu- 
 pid, impious stones we should be, without divine grace. But let 
 us go on ; we are not the only mixture of good and evil that hath 
 flitted across this mountain. 
 
 We pass now the Wengern village, a few very neat chalets 
 hanging to the mountain amidst plenty of verdure. Then we 
 sweep round the circular base of a craggy perpendicular moun- 
 tain ridge, which encloses us on one side, while the deep Valley 
 of Lauterbrunnen is hid out of sight on the other. Here we 
 stop to listen to the Alpine Horn, with its clear and beautiful 
 echoes. It is nothing but a straight wooden trumpet, about six 
 feet long, requiring no small quantity of breath to give it utter- 
 ance. The Old Man of the Mountains, that old Musician, coeval 
 with the first noise in creation, takes up the melody with his 
 mighty reverberating concave wall of granite, and sends it back 
 with a prolonged, undulating, ringing, clear, distinct tone, the 
 effect of which is indescribably charming. Our lad of the horn 
 has also a little cannon, which he fires off at the instance of the 
 traveller, and the mountain sends it back with a thousand thun- 
 ders, that roll in grand bursts of sound from the distant crags, 
 and again, from still more distant ridges, reverberate magnifi- 
 cently. 
 
CHAP, xvi.] JUNGFRAU ALP. 69 
 
 " The Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, 
 I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng !" 
 
 And now we pass on, and enter a silent sea of pines, how 
 beautiful ! silent, still, solemn, religious ; dark against the enor- 
 mous snowy masses and peaks before us. How near their glit- 
 tering glaciers seem upon us ! How clear the atmosphere ! 
 How our voices ring out upon it, and the very hum of the insects 
 in the air is distinctly sonorous. We have now ascended to such 
 a height, that we can look across the vales and mountains, down 
 into Unterseen and Interlachen. And now before us rises the 
 Jungfrau Alp, how sublimely ! But at this moment of the view 
 the Silberhorn is far more lovely with its fields of dazzling 
 snow, than the Jungfrau, which here presents a savage perpen- 
 dicular steep, a wall of rock, scarred and seamed indeed, but so 
 steep, that the snow and ice cannot cling to its jagged points. 
 Higher up commence the tremendous glaciers, presenting a chaos 
 of enormous ravines of snow and ice, just ready to topple down 
 the ridge of the mountain. 
 
 
70 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvn. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Jungfrau Alp and its Avalanches. 
 
 WHEN we come to the inn upon the Wengern Alp, we are near 
 5500 feet above the level of the sea. We are directly in face 
 of the JUNGFRAU upon whose masses of perpetual snow we have 
 been gazing with so much interest. They seem close to us, so 
 great is the deception in clear air, but a deep, vast ravine (I know 
 not but a league across from where we are) separates the Wen- 
 gern Alp from the Jungfrau, which rises in an abrupt sheer pre- 
 cipice, of many thousand feet, somewhat broken into terraces, 
 down which the Avalanches, from the higher beds of untrodden 
 everlasting snow, plunge thundering into the uninhabitable abyss. 
 Perhaps there is not another mountain so high in all Switzerland, 
 which you can look at so near and so full in the face. Out of 
 this ravine the Jungfrau rises eleven thousand feet, down which 
 vast height the Avalanches sometimes sweep with their incal- 
 culable masses of ice from the very topmost summit. 
 
 The idea of a mass of ice so gigantic that it might overwhelm 
 whole hamlets, or sweep away a forest in its course, being shot 
 down, with only one or two interruptions, a distance of eleven 
 thousand feet, is astounding. But it is those very interruptions 
 that go to produce the overpowering sublimity of the scene. Were 
 there no concussion intervening between the loosening of the 
 mountain ridge of ice and snow, and its fall into the valley, if 
 it shot sheer off into the air, and came down in one solid mass 
 unbroken, it would be as if a mountain had fallen at noon-day 
 out of heaven. And this would certainly be sublime in the 
 highest degree, but it would not have the awful slowness and deep 
 prolonged roar of the Jungfrau avalanche in mid air, nor the 
 repetition of sublimity with each interval of thousands of feet, 
 in which it strikes and thunders. 
 
CHAP, xvii.] JUNGFRAU AVALANCHES. 71 
 
 I think that without any exception it was the grandest sight I 
 ever beheld, not even the cataract of Niagara having impressed 
 me with such thrilling sublimity. Ordinarily, in a sunny day at 
 noon, the avalanches are falling on the Jungfrau about every ten 
 minutes, with the roar of thunder, but they are much more sel- 
 dom visible, and sometimes the traveller crosses the Wengern 
 Alp without witnessing them at all. But we were so very highly 
 favored as to see two of the grandest avalanches possible in the 
 course of about an hour, between twelve o'clock and two. One 
 cannot command any language to convey an adequate idea of 
 their magnificence. 
 
 You are standing far below, gazing up to where the great disc 
 of the glittering Alp cuts the heavens, and drinking in the influ- 
 ence of the silent scene around. Suddenly an enormous mass 
 of snow and ice, in itself a mountain, seems to move ; it breaks 
 from the toppling outmost mountain ridge of snow, where it is 
 hundreds of feet in depth, and in its first fall of perhaps two 
 thousand feet, is broken into millions of fragments. As you first 
 see the flash of distant artillery by night, then hear the roar, 
 so here you may see the white flashing mass majestically bowing, 
 then hear the astounding din. A cloud of dusty, misty, dry 
 snow rises into the air from the concussion, forming a white 
 volume of fleecy smoke, or misty light, from the bosom of which 
 thunders forth the icy torrent in its second prodigious fall over 
 the rocky battlements. The eye follows it delighted, as it ploughs 
 through the path which preceding avalanches have worn, till it 
 comes to the brink of a vast ridge of bare rock, perhaps more 
 than" two thousand feet perpendicular. Then pours the whole 
 cataract over the gulf, with a still louder roar of echoing thun- 
 der, to which nothing but the noise of Niagara in its sublimity is 
 comparable. 
 
 Nevertheless, you may think of the tramp of an army of ele- 
 phants, of the roar of multitudinous cavalry marching to battle, 
 of the whirlwind tread of ten thousand bisons sweeping across 
 the prairie, of the tempest surf of ocean beating and shaking 
 the continent, of the sound of torrent floods or of a numerous host, 
 or of the voice of the Trumpet on Sinai, exceeding loud, and 
 waxing louder and louder, so that all the people in the camp 
 
72 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvn. 
 
 trembled, or of the rolling orbs of that fierce Chariot described 
 by Milton, 
 
 " Under whose burning wheels 
 The steadfast empyrean shook throughout." 
 
 ' ik r ' 
 
 It is with such a mighty shaking tramp that the Avalanche down 
 thunders. 
 
 Another fall of still greater depth ensues, over a second simi- 
 lar castellated ridge or reef in the face of the mountain, with an 
 awful, majestic slowness, and a tremendous crash in its concus- 
 sion, awakening again the reverberating peals of thunder. Then 
 the torrent roars on to another smaller fall, till at length it reaches 
 a mighty groove of snow and ice, like the slide down the Pilatus, 
 of which Play fair has given so powerfully graphic a description. 
 Here its progress is slower, and last of all you listen to the roar 
 of the falling fragments, as they drop, out of sight, with a dead 
 weight into the bottom of the gulf, to rest there for ever. 
 
 Now figure to yourself a cataract like that of Niagara (for I 
 should judge the volume of one of these avalanches to be proba- 
 bly every way superior in bulk to the whole of the Horse- 
 shoe fall), poured in foaming grandeur, not merely over one 
 great precipice of 200 feet, but over the successive ridgy preci- 
 pices of two or three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven 
 thousand feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down, 
 with a continuous din of far greater sublimity than the sound of 
 the grandest cataract. Placed on the slope of the Wengern Alp, 
 right opposite the whole visible side of the Jungfrau, we have 
 enjoyed two of these mighty spectacles, at about half an hour's 
 interval between them. The first was the most sublime, the 
 second the most beautiful. The roar of the falling mass begins 
 to be heard the moment it is loosened from the mountain ; it 
 pours on with the sound of a vast body of rushing water ; then 
 comes the first great concussion, a booming crash of thunders, 
 breaking on the still air in mid heaven ; your breath is suspended, 
 as you listen and look ; the mighty glittering mass shoots head- 
 long over the main precipice, and the fall is so great, that it pro- 
 duces to the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness, of 
 
CHAP, xvii.] AVALANCHE THUNDER. 73 
 
 which I have spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than 
 Niagara. But if you should see the cataract of Niagara itself 
 coming down five thousand feet above you in the air, there would 
 be the same impression. The image remains in the mind, and 
 can never fade from it ; it is as if you had seen an alabaster 
 cataract from heaven. 
 
 The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara, because 
 of the preceding stillness in those awful Alpine solitudes. In 
 the midst of such silence and solemnity, from out the bosom of 
 those glorious glittering forms of nature, comes that rushing, 
 crashing thunder-burst of sound ! If it were not that your soul, 
 through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of the 
 vision, as through the sense of hearing with that of the audible 
 
 o o 
 
 report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your hands, 
 and fall prostrate, as at the voice of the Eternal ! But it is im- 
 possible to convey any adequate idea of the combined impression 
 made by these rushing masses and rolling thunders upon the 
 soul. When you see the smaller avalanches, they are of the 
 very extreme of beauty, like jets of white powder, or heavy 
 white mist or smoke, poured from crag to crag, like as if the 
 Staubach itself were shot from the top of the Jungfrau. Travel- 
 lers do more frequently see only these smaller cataracts, in which 
 the beautiful predominates over the sublime ; and at the inn they 
 told us it was very rare to witness so mighty an avalanche as 
 that of which we had enjoyed the spectacle. Lord Byron must 
 have seen something like it, when he and Hobhouse were on the 
 mountain together. His powerful descriptions in Manfred could 
 have been drawn from nothing but the reality. 
 
 " Ye toppling crags of ice, 
 Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down, 
 In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me ! 
 I hear ye momently, above, beneath, 
 Crush with a frequent conflict: but ye pass, 
 And only fall on things that still would live ; 
 On the young flourishing forest, or the hut 
 And hamlet of the harmless villager. 
 The mists boil up around the glaciers ; clouds 
 Rise curling far beneath me, white and sulphury, 
 Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell." 
 
74 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvm. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Mortar-avalanches. Valley and glaciers of Grindlewald. 
 
 Now must we leave this scene, refreshed both in body and spirit, 
 and travel on higher, still higher, to the summit of the pass. 
 The Jungfrau with her diadem of virgin snow is still before us, 
 singing her hymns of thunder, and the sharp enormous mass of 
 the Eigher shoots out almost in front. The avalanches are still 
 falling at short intervals, but chiefly on the other side of the 
 mountain, produced by the echoes of guns, fired from the Wen- 
 gern side. This is the method resorted to for bringing down the 
 hanging masses of snow, by the concussion of the air, when the 
 avalanches do not occur voluntarily in sight of travellers, in 
 order, if possible, that they may not be obliged to pass the moun- 
 tain without witnessing this greatest of Alpine sublimities. And 
 even these mortar-avalanches are well worth seeing. But they 
 cannot be so sublime as those which Nature produces of her 
 own proper motion. Besides, it is quite intolerable to find every, 
 thing for sale ; to be buying a look at an avalanche, just like 
 some popular wonder, where the keeper stands with the string of 
 the curtain in his hand, ready to disclose the mysteries so soon 
 as you have deposited your shilling. So you get an avalanche 
 with a sixpence worth of powder, as if you had gone to visit the 
 Zoological Gardens, or Dr. Koch's Hydrargos. Really one 
 would rather wait upon the mountain for days, and talk alone 
 with nature, permitting her to indulge her own fancies. 
 
 On the highest part of the pass we found a vender of straw, 
 berries, cakes, and cream, with a stout little cannon and plenty 
 of ammunition. For a dish of strawberries he charged only a 
 single batz, or three cents, and half this sum for firing his can- 
 non ! Probably it was because most of our party were Germans ; 
 but whatever men may say of Swiss prices, there was no extortion 
 
CHAP, xvm.] VIEW OF GRINDLEWALD. 75 
 
 here, neither at the Hotel of the Mountain ; and at either place 
 they would be justified in charging quite inordinately. Here a 
 man may shoot avalanches, as he would bring down pigeons 
 on the wing, but he cannot always bag his game. He hears 
 the swift crashing mass, but sees nothing. The virtue of our 
 strawberry-lad's cannon was thus tested, and each time the re- 
 port was followed, after a moment or two of silence, by two 
 rushing ice-falls, but apparently on the other side of the moun- 
 tain, with a sound as of buried thunder. 
 
 The view from the summit of the pass towards Grindlewald 
 is very magnificent, for you see the whole green and lovely val- 
 ley, amidst its grand surrounding mountains, and can even dis- 
 tinguish afar off the inn on the pass of the Grand Scheideck. 
 The snowy peaks of the Jungfrau, 13,718 feet above the level 
 of the sea, the Monch, 13,598 feet, and the Giant Eigher, 13,070 
 feet, are in full sight ; also, as you proceed, the Wetterhorn, or 
 Peak of Tempests, the Schreckhorn, or Peak of Terror, and the 
 Finster-Aarhorn, or Peak of Darkness, come into the vision, the 
 latter, with its sharp sky pointed pyramid, being the loftiest of 
 the Oberland group. Well named are these mighty peaks, for 
 Terror, Storm, and Darkness do here hold their sway through 
 no small part of the year, though, on such a bright midsummer's 
 day as we are passing, with what glittering, varied, successive 
 splendors do they crown the view ! You can scarcely take your 
 eye from them, so exciting and transcendently beautiful is the 
 scene, even to watch the difficult rough path by which you are 
 travelling. There are within sight of it the traces of the path 
 of an enormous avalanche, which swept down whole woods, as 
 the sweep of a mower's scythe cuts clean the grass, and leaves 
 the dry stubble. 
 
 The glacier of Grindlewald is seen at the bottom of the Val- 
 ley, having pushed itself out through a mountain gorge from the 
 everlasting Empire of Winter, down amidst the habitations of 
 man, by the green pastures and gardens and sunny brooks of 
 summer. A little more, and it might hang its icy dripping 
 caverns over the heads of the haymakers, though now you enter 
 those caverns at a point much below the sloping meadows, where 
 the mowers are busy with their scythes. The body of the glacier, 
 
76 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvm. 
 
 that at this point extends its advanced post into the green valley, 
 winds, it is said, among the Alps of the Oberland to the immense 
 extent of 115 square miles. You visit this Lower Glacier of 
 Grindlewald on your way down from the Wengern Alp, and you 
 find a scene, which in some respects is the Mont-Anvert of 
 Chamouny over again. The cavern, from which issues one of 
 the two rivers that form the Lutschinen, seems not so large as 
 that of the Arveiron in Chamouny, although the entrance to it 
 is said to form a magnificent arch seventy feet high. The color 
 of the ice is exquisitely clear, sparkling, and beautiful, whereas 
 at the foot of the Chamouny glacier it is grey and dingy. The 
 mountains that rise around this glacier of Grindlewald, the ex- 
 quisite green of the valley, the exciting contrast in the land- 
 scapes, the soft pastures and black forests of fir skirting and 
 fringing such oceans of frost, and craggy ridges and peaks of 
 ice and snow, present a strange, wild, lovely scene to the im- 
 agination, both grand and lovely, with such startling alternations 
 as you meet no where else but in dreams. 
 
 From my room in the evening at the inn I could see, or seemed 
 in the distance to see, the whole of this glacier. An excursion 
 upon it would have detained me a day of this bright weather 
 (and who could tell how soon it might change, leaving me impri- 
 soned among the mountains?), but the visit would have been almost 
 as interesting as the exploring of the glaciers of Mont-Anvert. 
 A sea of ice and snow spreads out before us, from which rises in 
 awful sublimity the vast peak of the Schreckhorn, and here you 
 may enter the very deepest recesses of winter, shut out from 
 every sign of life and verdure. How sublime the scenery of this 
 Valley ! for every successive generation the same impressive 
 grandeur. While spring, summer, autumn, winter, have danced 
 their changing life of glory and gloom together, from creation's 
 dawn, tempest and storm have made these peaks their habitation, 
 and will do so while the world lasts. What a day of sublime 
 and beautiful visions has this been ! It is almost too much of 
 glory to be crowded into one such short interval. One scarcely 
 notes the fatigue of the passage, in the constant excitement of 
 mind produced by such glorious forms of nature. 
 
 With what undying beauty does the moon pour her soft light 
 
CHAP, xvm.] GRINDLEWALD VILLAGE. 77 
 
 into the deep snowy recesses of the glacier, or rather of the vast 
 abyss, round which the sides of mountains sheeted with eternal 
 ice form perpendicular barriers, where avalanches shoot down to 
 bury themselves as in an ocean. The scene is still and solemn. 
 The glacier is so near, that the dwelling-houses seem almost to 
 touch it. The moon is now shooting her light up from behind 
 the vast mountain of the Wetterhorn, streaming across the Met- 
 tenberg, and gilding the snowy outlines of the scenery, till they 
 look like the edges of the silvery clouds. Dante has some lines 
 in his celestial Paradise that might well be descriptive of this 
 scene. The cornice of snow running round the inner walls of 
 the mountains and the glaciers looks like the cornices of Egyp- 
 tian Temples. 
 
 The guides at Grindlewald seemed to enjoy themselves after 
 the day's various excursions, carrying their merriment deep into 
 the night. From all quarters travellers are collected in the vil- 
 lage to scatter again across the mountain passes in the morning, 
 some back to Interlachen, some over the Wengern Alp to Lau- 
 terbrunnen, some for the glaciers, some across the Grand Schei- 
 deck. The little valley is a central mirror both of the grandeur 
 and beauty of Swiss scenery. The village is in clusters of pic- 
 turesque cottages, scattered along the grassy upland slopes, and 
 winding down to the bottom of the vale. The people must sub- 
 sist principally by the pasturage of their cattle, and the products 
 of the dairy, with some chamois hunting ; for Spring, Summer, 
 and Autumn are all condensed into five short months, leaving the 
 rest of the year to undisputed winter, and mingling the instability 
 of all seasons into one. The thick forest-like verdure of the 
 Valley of Lauterbrunnen is missing here, though the two vales 
 are about the same height above the sea. Lauterbrunnen is a 
 deep, entire, colossal, perpendicular cleft in the mountains, an 
 oblong shaft as in a mine ; Grindlewald is a more gradual basin 
 between gigantic ascending peaks and passes. In either Valley 
 how appropriate are those texts from Scripture, which sometimes 
 run round the wooden galleries of the cottages. Inscribed when 
 the dwellings were erected, they are as an heir-loom of piety, as 
 the voice of an ancestral patriarch still speaking. " By the help of 
 God, in whom is my trust," says one of these devout mementos, 
 
78 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xvm. 
 
 " I have erected this for my habitation, and commend the same 
 to his gracious protection. 1781." Surely it is a good and plea- 
 sant custom. " Because thou hast made the Most High thy 
 habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague 
 come nigh thy dwelling." 
 
 In the morning, when ascending from the Valley, peak after 
 peak comes into view, with the bright sun successively striking 
 them. At length you see at once the two glaciers, with the peaks 
 of the Schreckhorn, the Eigher, the Wetterhorn, the Mettenberg, 
 and far across the Wengern Alp, the range of snowy summits 
 beyond Lauterbrunnen. The sunrise is beautifully reported from 
 point to point, with the rays of light gilding and silvering the 
 edges and crags of the mountain. 
 
 Almost every grand scene in Switzerland has its story or le- 
 gend of sad things or supernatural connected with it. The acci- 
 dents and escapes of ages are chronicled in tradition, as the 
 battles of the mountain heroes are in history. It is said that 
 one of the former innkeepers at Grindlewald, Christopher Bohren, 
 was once on his way across the glacier between the Wetterhorn 
 and the Mettenberg, when the ice broke beneath him, and he 
 was plunged down a cavity of some sixty-four feet. He was 
 not killed by the fall, but his arm was broken. There was no 
 possibility of an ascent, and this gulf seemed to enclose him for 
 the resurrection, in a sepulchre of ice, himself embalmed while 
 living, by the Magician Frost, to sit there as a staring ice-mum- 
 my, for ever. Nevertheless, there was the sound of dripping 
 and gurgling water, and on groping round he discovered a chan- 
 nel worn in the ice, into which he could just creep and advance 
 painfully, if it might possibly issue to the day. There was a 
 hope, and it kept the fingers of the frost from his heart, and ani- 
 mated him to drag his bruised and stiffened limbs along the drip, 
 ping ice-fissure, thinking of his wife and children. What a 
 terrible situation ! Would he ever again see the blue sky, and 
 the green grass, and the curling smoke from the chalets of the 
 village ? Would he hear the voices of friends searching for 
 him ? Could he live till they should miss him ? Would he ever 
 again see the face of a human being ? Thus groping in the 
 heart of the glacier, suddenly he came to the outlet of the tor- 
 
CHAP, xvm.] JUNGFRAU AVALANCHES. 79 
 
 rent, which had worn for him the channel, and following its 
 plainer and more open course, he was extricated and saved ! 
 
 Not longer ago than 1821, M. Mouron, a clergyman from Ve- 
 vay, lost his life in visiting the lower glacier. He was not with- 
 out a guide, but not being tied to him, fell into one of the yawn- 
 ing crevices in the ice, a gulf of near 700 feet in depth, and 
 must have been killed instantly. Twelve days afterward the 
 body of the unfortunate traveller was found and brought up to 
 the day by tying a guide to a rope, and letting him down into the 
 abyss with a lantern. After several attempts of this nature, 
 the persevering hunter, though exhausted by the want of air, 
 succeeding in attaching the corpse to his own body. A watch 
 and purse found upon it redeemed the guide from the murderous 
 suspicions which had rested upon him, and the dead traveller was 
 buried in the parish church. There is great danger in walking 
 upon or along the sharp edges of the almost fathomless gulfs in 
 these glaciers. You may think yourself very careful, but then 
 you are to remember also the inevitable fatal consequences of a 
 single slip, or of one false step, or even of an uncertain move- 
 ment. There are sometimes similar situations in life, where a 
 man's path, be it wrong or right, leads across great dangers, and 
 one false or presumptuous step is the misery of a life-time. A 
 decision, which it takes but an instant io make, it may cost years 
 to recover from. A man is a fool, who ventures amidst such 
 hazards, except at the call of truth and duty. 
 
80 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xix. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Pass of the Scheideck to Meyringen. 
 
 I FIND that I have recorded the scenes of this day in my journal, 
 as having been so varied and so beautiful as to be almost fatigu- 
 ing. The feeling of fatigue is gone ; I do not at all remember 
 it ; but the sense of beauty is eternal. We started from Grin- 
 dlewald early, and visit the Upper Glacier. There is a little 
 lake of water at its margin, a crystal cup as it were, where 
 the glacier, the mountains and the heavens are reflected with 
 wonderful depth and beauty. An old man met us, who acts as 
 guide into the glacier, and who told us he had twenty-four chil- 
 dren, ten by his first wife, and fourteen by his second. He was 
 a droll old fellow, this ice guide, looking indeed immeasurably 
 old, but entering with a great deal of youthful cheerfulness into 
 the blithesome humor of the. young travellers about him. Under 
 his guidance we entered a cavern in the glacier, a deep crystal 
 ravine, high enough to advance upright, without touching the 
 pointed roof, winding quite a distance into the body of the glacier, 
 whose superincumbent mountain masses will one day crush it. 
 The ice-walls are of an exquisite and almost perfectly transparent 
 emerald or azure, smooth as glass, and dripping with water as 
 cold as the ice itself. It was a hazardous position for the travel- 
 ler, for the roof of this cavern of azure ice is sure to fall, and it 
 might as well fall while we were there, as at any other time, but 
 we entered and came forth in safety. An entombment alive in 
 such a sepulchre would have been far worse than a fall of ten 
 thousand feet among the icy precipices. 
 
 It is impossible to say what it is that gives to the ice of these 
 glaciers so beautiful a color. It is this partly which makes them 
 so much more beautiful than those of Chamouny ; at the same 
 time, that their peaks and minarets are so varied, their depths so 
 
CHAP, xix.] SIGHTS IN FINE WEATHER. 81 
 
 enormous, and the step from them into the depths of an intense 
 summer verdure so sudden and startling. They are a forest of 
 icebergs, that have marched down to bid defiance to the forest of 
 firs. From the height of the Grand Scheideck the glacier is a 
 most magnificent object, as also are the glittering mountain bar- 
 riers, silent, stern, and awful, that enclose it. How different your 
 feelings when you are in the depths of the Valley, with the moun- 
 tains shutting you in and keeping watch over you, looking down 
 upon you with their grand and awful countenances, and those 
 which you experience when you ascend so high as to command 
 both them and your former position in one view, when you rise to 
 a point, whence you can look in among them, count and compare 
 their masses, and confront their brightness from their foundations 
 to their topmost summits. But you must have fine weather. 
 Scarce one feature of all this glory is to be seen, if you are tra- 
 velling in the mist, if the clouds are low, or the rain is pouring. 
 
 It is like the progress of the soul in the study of divine truth. 
 Your atmosphere must be clear, the sun shining. There are days 
 when clouds cover everything, days of rain, and days of mist, 
 and seasons of tremendous tempest. When you are in the val- 
 ley, it does not make so much difference. There is a portion of 
 truth, which is visible at all times, green grass, still waters, quiet 
 meadows, though you may not see a single mountain summit. 
 Down in such a quiet depth, the great mysterious truths of the 
 system that surrounds you, overshadow you and shut you in. 
 But if you would see their glory, there is much labor of the soul 
 needed ; you must toil upwards, you must have bright weather 
 in the soul, and by and by you gain a point, where you survey 
 the mighty system ; its glittering masses and ranges stretch off 
 below, above, around you ; its sky-pointing summits pierce the 
 upper depths of heaven ; here you must have faith, you must 
 be somewhat with John in Patmos, in the Spirit ; for if the mist 
 is around you, you can see nothing, but if the sun is shining, 
 what an infinitude of glory opens to your view ! 
 
 While on the Grand Scheideck, we enjoyed the sight of a most 
 beautiful Avalanche ; it was the extreme of beauty, but without 
 the sublimity of those we have witnessed the day before. If this 
 had been all that we had seen, we should have deemed the de- 
 
 PART II. 7 
 
82 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xix. 
 
 scriptions sometimes given to be altogether exaggerated. The 
 traveller in Switzerland is unfortunate, who does not see a genu- 
 ine avalanche on a grand scale. But this was very beautiful ; 
 first a sudden jet from the mountain, like a rocket of white 
 smoke, then the fall of the whole mass of ice and snow with a 
 cloud rising from it, and a rush of small thunder, like the roar 
 of a waterfall. 
 
 From the Grand Scheideck down into the Valley of Hasli at 
 Meyringen, the journey is one of indescribable, and to a man 
 that knows nothing of Alpine scenery, inconceivable magnificence. 
 It is true that the prospect before you, as you pass down towards 
 Rosenlaui, is not so remarkable for its grandeur, as the scenes 
 you have already passed through ; but behind you, in the even- 
 ing sun, the way is a perspective of lengthening glory, where the 
 snowy mountains, seen through the forests of firs, and overhang- 
 ing them, floating, as it were, in a heaven of golden light, give 
 to the eye a vision of contrasts and splendors, the like of which 
 may possibly no where else be presented. 
 
 Such is sometimes the difference between experience and an- 
 ticipation. A man's early life is often so much pleasanter and 
 more prosperous than his late, that the retrospect looks full of rich 
 and mellow scenes, lovely remembrances in soft enchanting 
 colors, while the prospect is destitute of beauty, or sometimes is 
 filled with foreboded tempests. Many a man in the decline of 
 life seems going down into gloom from a mountain-top of glory, 
 and all the light of his existence shines to him from behind. But 
 this cannot be the case with a Christian. The brightest prospect 
 is before him. That man is happy who loves to dwell upon the 
 future, upon what is in reserve for him. That man is happy, 
 who sees, over the storms of his past life, a bow of promise, 
 created by a setting sun, that is to rise in glory. A guilty man 
 cannot love to dwell upon the past, unless he be a penitent man, 
 a man of faith, who sees in the past the commencement and pro- 
 phecy of a better future. The saying of the ancient moralist 
 was uttered without much knowledge of its whole meaning : 
 
 " Hoc est vivere bis 
 Vita posse priore frui." 
 
CHAP, xix.] THE CROSS ON THE PAST. 83 
 
 " 'Tis living twice, 
 
 To enjoy past life." 
 
 For, who can enjoy his past life, unless the light of the Cross be 
 shining upon it ? No man can do it, without some great and 
 dreadful delusion, for the only light of hope, or material of good- 
 ness and blessedness in the Past, comes from the Cross of Christ. 
 But where that is shining, how it floods the mountain passes of 
 our existence with glory ! 
 
84 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xx. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Glacier of Rosenlaui and Falls of the Reichenbach. 
 
 ON your way down, you have the excursion to the glacier of 
 Rosenlaui, celebrated for the extreme beauty of its roseate and 
 azure colors. It lies in a mighty mountain gorge on our right, 
 far up between the great masses of the Wellborn and the Angels' 
 Peaks (Engelhorner), a most remarkable scene, both in itself and 
 its accessories, the ice-born picture, its fir-clad base, and its 
 gigantic craggy frame. A thundering torrent comes roaring 
 down an almost fathomless split in the mountain, where the jag- 
 ged sides threaten each other like the jaws of hell. Torrents 
 from different directions meet fiercely at the foot of the glacier, 
 which is thrown over them as a mountain of ice, with vast ice 
 blocks roofing the subterranean fissure, with a mighty peak of 
 rock towering above, and a mountain of granite on the other side. 
 You enter the bosom of the glacier by steps cut for you by the 
 guide, at the risk of tumbling into the conflict of waters below. 
 The surrounding forests of fir, the cataracts, the ice-cliffs shining, 
 and the grey bare crags, keeping watch like sentinels, together 
 with the extreme picturesqueness and beauty of the Valley open- 
 ing out beneath, make up a scene well worth the toil of climbing 
 to it. 
 
 Now you take the way down from Rosenlaui to Meyringen ; 
 looking behind you, it is still inexpressibly beautiful, more beau- 
 tiful than the vision of the vale. It is because of the combina- 
 tion between the snow, the sun, and the black fir forest, the firs 
 against the snow, the snow against the sun, the air a flood of 
 glory. Through a winding vale of firs the great white moun- 
 tains flash upon you, now hidden and now revealed ; and of all 
 sights in Switzerland, that of the bright snow summits seen 
 through and amidst such masses of deep overshadowing foliage, 
 
CHAP, xx.] REICHENBACH CASCADE. 85 
 
 by which you may be buried in twilight at noonday, is the most 
 picturesque and wildly beautiful. Between four o'clock and 
 sunset this Rosenlaui pass, in a bright day, is wonderful. The 
 white perfect cones and pyramids of some of the summits alter- 
 nate with the bare rocky needles and ridges of others, all dis- 
 tinctly defined against the sky, with the light falling on them in a 
 wild magic azure-tinted clearness. Here is one section or qua- 
 drature of the picture as you look upwards to the heights down 
 which you have been so long descending ; far off, up in the 
 heavens a vast curling ridge of snow cuts the azure upper deep ; 
 nearer, the enormous grey peak of the Wellborn shoots above it ; 
 lower, towards this world, between two great mountains, down 
 rushes the magnificent glacier of Rosenlaui, till its glittering 
 masses, which seem ready to take one plunge out of heaven to 
 earth, are lost to your eye behind the green depths of the forest. 
 
 But if we stay looking at this scene and still loitering and 
 looking behind us, we shall not get to Meyringen till night-fall. 
 So down we climb, beside the roaring torrent, which is impetu- 
 ously plunging and foaming to take the leap of the Reichenbach 
 fall, not at all knowing what awaits us, when suddenly comes 
 another of those swift, vast contrasts, those mighty shiftings of 
 scenery, so unexpected and unthought of, as in a dream. As if 
 the world's walls had opened before you, and you had just lighted 
 with wings on a shelving precipice to look forth, the Vale of 
 Meyringen is disclosed far beneath, with its village and meadows, 
 church steeples and clumps of trees, and the bright Alpbach cas- 
 cade pouring over the crags on the other side. From the point 
 where you stand, the descent into the Vale is near two thousand 
 feet, rugged and precipitous, and from nearly your present level, 
 the stream of the Reichenbach takes its grand leap down the 
 gorge at your left, making the celebrated Reichenbach Falls, 
 and afterwards, by a succession of leaps not quite so grand, it 
 races, foaming and thundering, over precipice after precipice, 
 through black jagged picturesque tortuous ravines down into the 
 Valley to join the Aar. 
 
 One would think the two rivers would be glad to have 
 a moment's peace, and pleasant, gurgling communion, after 
 such a furious daring cataractical course of foam and thun- 
 
86 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xx. 
 
 der. Each of them has come down out of ice-palaces as 
 from the alabaster gates of heaven, and each has made, in its 
 perilous course, one of the grandest cataracts in all Switzerland, 
 Now they flow on as if nothing had happened, like generous 
 minds after some great action. Methinks they are saying one to 
 another, as their waters meet and mingle, How much pleasanter 
 it is to be gliding on so quietly between green banks and rich 
 meadows, than to be tumbling over the mountains, where we seem 
 to be of no use whatever, but for great parties of English people 
 to come and look at us through their eye-glasses. But you are 
 mistaken, gentle streams. Perhaps you have done more good, 
 by the grand thoughts your " unceasing thunder and eternal 
 foam " have given rise to in your perilous career among the 
 mountains, than you will do in your path of verdure all the way 
 to the sea. It is not the sole use of streams like yours to make 
 the grasses and the flowers to grow, or to enjoy yourselves among 
 them. But we cannot wonder that you do not wish to be always 
 playing the Cataract. 
 
CHAP, xxi.] VOICES OF EVENING. 87 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Twilight, Evening, and Night in Switzerland. A Sabbath in Meyringen. 
 
 THE stillness of evening in Switzerland is accompanied with a 
 soft music from the thousand mountain torrents, which roar with 
 such a shouting voice at noon day, loosened by the sun from the 
 glaciers, and then subside into a more quiet, soul-like melody. It 
 is like the wind, strong blowing on an Eolian Harp with loud 
 strains, and then sinking down into faint aerial murmurs. So at 
 evening, the streams being partially pent up again in ice, the 
 sound grows less in body, but more distinct in tone, and more in 
 unison with the sacred stillness of the hour. It is like changing 
 the stops in an organ. The effect has been noted both by plain 
 prose travellers and imaginative poets, and nothing can be more 
 beautiful. The lulled evening hum of the busy world, and the 
 dim twilight of the air, and the gradual stealing forth of the 
 modest stars after the heat and glare of day, are in harmony. 
 As in Milton, 
 
 " At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
 Rose like a steam of rich-distilled perfumes, 
 And stole upon the air." 
 
 For at such an hour the music of nature, passing into solemn 
 voices of the night, seems rather like the hushing strains from 
 invisible harps of celestial intelligences floating in the atmosphere, 
 than like any music from material things. Some of the finest 
 lines ever composed by the Poet Rogers were called forth by the 
 perception of these stilly notes and almost imperceptible harmo- 
 nies of evening. I say almost imperceptible, because a man 
 busied with external things, or even engaged in social talk, will 
 scarce notice them. The mind must be in somewhat of a pen- 
 sive mood, and watching with the finer senses. A traveller must 
 be alone, or must say to his friend, Hush ! listen ! 
 
88 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxi. 
 
 " Oft at the silent, shadowy close of day, 
 When the hushed grove has sung its parting lay, 
 When pensive twilight, in her dusky car, 
 Comes slowly on to meet the evening star, 
 Above, below, aerial murmurs swell 
 From hanging wood, brown heath, and bushy dell ! 
 A thousand nameless rills, that shun the light, 
 Stealing soft music on the ear of night. 
 So oft the finer movements of the soul, 
 That shun the sphere of pleasure's gay control, 
 In the still shades of calm seclusion rise, 
 And breathe their sweet seraphic harmonies !" 
 
 PLEASURES OF MEMORY. 
 
 This is very beautiful. Do we not at such an hour, more than 
 any other, feel as if we were sojourning, in the striking language 
 of Foster, " on that frontier, where the material and the ideal 
 worlds join and combine their elements ?" It is the hour, when 
 Isaac-like, the solitary saint in the country, if not in the city, 
 
 " Walks forth to meditate at even-tide," 
 
 and thinks upon a world that thinks not for herself. It is the 
 hour, when among the mountains or in the villages, the soul seems 
 sometimes to see far out beyond the verge of Time, seems to feel 
 the horizon of existence expanding, seems to be upon the sea-side, 
 and is impelled, as in the beautiful image of Young, to 
 
 " Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore 
 Of that vast Ocean, she must sail so soon !" 
 
 Delightful it is, when Saturday evening comes, with such 
 calm and sacred voices and influences of nature, if the soul is 
 in the right mood, to hear the prelude wherewith it seems as if 
 nature herself would put man in harmony for the Sabbath. 
 
 " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
 The holy time is quiet as a Nun 
 Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly !" WORDSWORTH. 
 
CHAP, xxi.] VOICES OF EVENING. 89 
 
 There is the feeling, if not the audible sense, of a similar sound 
 among the mountains, though inland far we be, the sound as of 
 waters rolling on the shore of another world, whether we call it, 
 with Wordsworth, the sound of that Immortal Sea that brought 
 us hither, or content ourselves with saying in plain prose that it 
 is the ever brooding sense of our Immortality, which no immor- 
 tal accountable being can ever shake from his constitution. 
 
 And now as I have quoted so many poets, drawn by the 
 analogy of that hour in human existence, which seems some- 
 times to have collected both religious and irreligious writers to- 
 gether in the same Porch, before the inner Temple of Devotion, 
 under the same irresistible influences, I will add one extract from 
 a great Poet who has entered that Temple, and not merely stood 
 and sung without ; a Poet of America, who has written too little, 
 and that little in too high a strain, to catch the popular applause 
 of his own countrymen.* 
 
 " listen, Man ! 
 
 A voice within us speaks that startling word, 
 Man ! thou shalt never die ! Celestial voices 
 Hymn it unto our souls : according harps 
 By angel ringers touched, when the mild stars 
 Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
 The song of our great immortality : 
 Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, 
 The tall dark mountains, and the deep -toned seas, 
 Join in this solemn, universal song. 
 listen, ye, our spirits ! drink it in 
 From all the air ! J Tis in the gentle moonlight ; 
 'Tis floating midst Day's setting glories ; Night, 
 Wrapt in her sable robe, with silent step, 
 Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears : 
 Night and the Dawn, bright Day and thoughtful Eve, 
 All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, 
 As one vast mystic instrument, are touched 
 By an unseen living Hand, and conscious chords 
 Quiver with joy in this great Jubilee. 
 The dying hear it ; and as sounds of earth 
 Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls 
 To mingle in this heavenly harmony !" 
 
 * Richard H. Dana. He might take a rank as high above all the Ameri- 
 can Poets, as Wordsworth has done above the modern Poets of Great 
 Britain. 
 
90 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxi. 
 
 All my companions left me at Meyringen, and I had a quiet, 
 lonely Sabbath. It was a beautiful day for travelling, but more 
 lovely still for resting. Had it rained, a number of persons 
 would have kept Sabbath at Meyringen, but they would not do it, 
 unless compelled by bad weather. Now God had given us six 
 days of bright elastic air, clear sun, and cloudless skies to see 
 him in his works ; should we grudge one day for the study of 
 his Word, one day for prayer ? Should we travel without God, 
 and travel in spite of him ? What a dark mind, under so bright 
 a heaven ! It is a sad and sinful example, which Protestant tra- 
 vellers do set in Switzerland, by not resting on the Sabbath day. 
 Prayer and provender never hindered a journey. That is a good 
 old proverb ; but it is safe to say that a man who rides over the 
 Sabbath, as well as through the week, though he may give his 
 horse provender, is starving and hurrying his soul. 
 
 Who resteth not one day in seven, 
 That soul shall never rest in heaven. 
 
 But there may be rest without worship, rest without prayer. The 
 Sabbath is more thoroughly observed by Romanists, in their way, 
 than it is by Protestants, in theirs. Without prayer, it is the 
 worst day, spiritually, in all the seven. He who gave it must 
 give the heart to keep it. How admirable is that sonnet trans- 
 lated by Wordsworth from Michael Angelo. Few original pieces 
 of Wordsworth contain so much real religion as these beautifully 
 translated lines. 
 
 " The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed, 
 If Thou the spirit give, by which I pray : 
 My unassisted heart is barren clay, 
 Which of its native self can nothing feed : 
 Of good and pious works Thou art the seed, 
 Which quickens only where thou sayst it may ; 
 Unless Thou show to us thine own true way 
 No man can find it : Father ! Thou must lead. 
 Do Thou then breathe those thoughts into my mind, 
 By which such virtue may in me be bred 
 That in thy holy footsteps I may tread : 
 The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind, 
 That I may have the power to sing of Thee, 
 And sound Thy praises everlastingly." 
 
CHAP, xxi.] SABBATH AND PRAYER. 91 
 
 The nights of Saturday and Sabbath, it was a lovely sight to 
 watch the rising moon upon the tops of the snow shining moun- 
 tains, at such an immense height above us. We could not see 
 the moon, but could only see her pale light travelling slowly 
 down, as a white soft veil, along the distant peaks and ridges, till 
 at a late hour the silver radiance poured more rapidly over the 
 forests, and filled the Valley. 
 
 Saturday evening is distinguished in Scotland and New Eng- 
 land as a time of speciality for washing children ; in some parts 
 of Switzerland it is a chief time for courting. I do not know 
 that here among the Oberland Alps they have any such custom 
 of child-scrubbing ; in some parts it might be questioned if they 
 have any ablutions at all ; but I am sure it is a good habit. 
 There was always a great moral lesson in it, besides the blessed- 
 ness of being perfectly cle t n once in a week. It taught the 
 children unconsciously that pui.'ty was becoming to the Sabbath ; 
 there was a sort of instinctive feeling induced by it, of the ne- 
 cessity of putting off the dark soils of the world and the week, 
 and of being within and without clean and tidy for the sacred 
 day. Well would it be if children of a riper growth could 
 wash themselves of the cares of the world and the deceitful- 
 ness of riches every Saturday evening, with as much ease 
 and ready obedience as they used to gather up their playthings and 
 submit to the bath of soap-suds ; if they could put aside their 
 ledgers, and see how their accounts stand for eternity on Satur- 
 day night, they would have more leisure for prayer on the Sab- 
 bath, and would not so often bring their farms, their cattle, and 
 their counting-houses into the House of God. 
 
92 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxn. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 From Meyringen to the Pass of the Grimsel. 
 
 AGAIN in the week's opening, upon our winding, upward way, 
 from Meyringen to the Pass of the Grimsel. What glorious 
 weather ! the element of Autumnal brightness and coolness min- 
 gling with the softness and warmth of the Summer. 
 
 " The silent night has passed into the prime 
 Of day to thoughtful souls a solemn time. 
 For man has wakened from his nightly death 
 And shut up sense, to morning's life and breath. 
 He sees go out in heaven the stars that kept 
 Their glorious watch, while he, unconscious, slept ; 
 Feels God was round him, while he knew it not, 
 Is awed then meets the world and God's forgot. 
 So may I not forget thee, holy Power ! 
 Be to me ever, as at this calm hour. 
 
 " The tree tops now are glittering in the sun : 
 Away ! 'Tis time my journey were begun !" 
 
 DANA. 
 
 Forth from the industrious, thriving village of Meyringen, we 
 pass through a picturesque, broken, wooded vale, with many 
 romantic side openings, and then comes one of the loveliest sud- 
 den morning views of the distant blue and snowy mountains. 
 The clouds have ranged themselves in zigzag fleeces, in a bright 
 atmosphere of many shades of azure, deepening and softening in 
 the distance. It is a lovely day. Whatever travellers have 
 been resting on the Sabbath, that rest has lost them nothing of 
 this heavenly weather, and it ought to make the soul's atmosphere 
 clearer and brighter for the whole week. So may it be ! So, 
 when we meet the world, may we not be " without God in the 
 world." How beautiful is God's creation in this light ! 
 
CHAP, xxii.] JACOB'S LADDER. 93 
 
 " And if there be whom broken ties 
 Afflict, or injuries assail, 
 Yon hazy ridges to their eyes 
 Present a glorious scale, 
 Climbing suffused with sunny air, 
 To stop, no record hath told where ! 
 And tempting fancy to ascend 
 And with immortal spirits blend ! 
 Wings at my shoulder seem to play, 
 But rooted here, I stand and gaze 
 On those bright steps that heavenward raise 
 Their practicable way. 
 
 Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad 
 And see to what fair countries ye are bound !" 
 
 The multiplication of mountain ridges of cloud, Wordsworth 
 describes as a sort of Jacob's ladder leading to heaven. Some- 
 times the mountains themselves look like a ladder, up and down 
 which the clouds, like angels, are flying. Were it as easy for 
 a broken-hearted man to get to heaven, as to climb these moun- 
 tain passes, few would fail. Afflictions make a craggy path in 
 the pilgrimage of many a man, who yet, alas, does not, by their 
 means, ascend to God, nor even experience the desire of so 
 ascending. But our motto must be Excelsior ! Excelsior ! 
 Higher ! Still Higher ! even to the throne of God ! 
 
 Thither the wings of Poetry will not bear us, nor glorious 
 sights, nor emblems, nor talk of angels, nor prosperity, nor ad- 
 versity, nor aught but Divine Grace. The best ladder in the 
 universe is good for nothing without, grace, simply because men 
 would not climb it. It might be made with steps of Jasper, and 
 set against the stone pillow beneath the sleeper's head, and angels 
 might stand upon it and wave their wings and beckon, but never 
 a step would man take, if grace within did not move him. This 
 thundering river Aar will split mountains in its course down- 
 war s rather than not get to the sea ; the very mound we are 
 cro sing is rifted from top to bottom to let it through ; but you 
 could not make it x turn backward and upward to its source. 
 Such is the course of a man's heart, so self-willed, so unchange- 
 able ; downwards, away from God, nothing can stop it; up- 
 wards, back to God, home to God, nothing can turn it, but God's 
 own grace in Christ. 
 
94 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxn. 
 
 Petrarch once climbed a high mountain with a little volume 
 of Augustine's Confessions in his pocket. At the summit, after 
 feasting himself with the landscape, he opened the book to read, 
 when the first passage that caught his eye was the following : 
 " Men travel far to climb high mountains, to observe the majesty 
 of the ocean, to trace the sources of rivers, but they neglect 
 themselves." Petrarch closed the book, and meditated upon the 
 lesson. If I have undergone so much labor in climbing this 
 mountain, said he, that my body might be nearer to heaven, what 
 ought I not to do, what labor is too great to undergo, that my 
 soul may be received there for ever ! This thought in the Poet's 
 mind was both devout and poetical, but it rises in the depths of 
 many a soul, without being reduced to practice. So much easier 
 is it to go on pilgrimage with the body, than to climb spiritually 
 the hill Difficulty ; so much easier to rise towards heaven with 
 the feet, than to carry the heart thither. 
 
 Why should a step of the soul upward be more difficult than 
 one of the body ? It is because of the burden of sin, and its 
 downward tendency. Nevertheless, there is this consolation, 
 that with every step of the soul upward the fatigue becomes less, 
 and the business of climbing grows from a labor into a habit, till 
 it seems as if wings were playing at the shoulders; while in 
 climbing with the body there is no approximation to a habit, and 
 the fatigue is ever increasing. The nearer the soul rises to God, 
 the more rapid and easy is its motion towards him. How be- 
 neficent is this ! How grand and merciful that " Divine agency," 
 says John Foster, " which apprehends a man, as apostolic lan- 
 guage expresses it, amidst the unthinking crowd, and leads him 
 into serious reflection, into elevated devotion, into progressive vir- 
 tue, and finally into a nobler life after death." 
 
 " When he has long been commanded by this influence, he 
 will be happy to look back to its first operations, whether they 
 were mingled in early life almost insensibly with his feelings, or 
 came on him with mighty force at some particular time, and in 
 connection with some assignable and memorable circumstance, 
 which was apparently the instrumental cause. He will trace 
 all the progress of this his better life, with grateful acknowledg- 
 ment to the Sacred Power, which has advanced him to a deci- 
 
CHAP, xxn.] RELIGIOUS HABIT. 95 
 
 siveness of religious habit, that seems to stamp eternity on his 
 character. In the great majority of things, habit is a greater 
 plague, than ever afflicted Egypt ; in religious character it is a 
 grand felicity. The devout man exults in the indications of his 
 being fixed and irretrievable. He feels this confirmed habit as 
 the grasp of the hand of God which will never let him go. From 
 this advanced state he looks with firmness and joy on futurity, 
 and says, I carry the eternal mark upon me that I belong to 
 God ; I am free of the universe ; and I am ready to go to any 
 world to which he shall please ta transmit me, certain that every- 
 where, in height or depth, he will acknowledge me for ever." 
 
96 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxm. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Upper Hasli, and the river Aar. Falls of the Aar. Desolation of the Pass. 
 
 Now we overlook the Vale of the Upper Hasli, with the Aar 
 winding through it. As I sit upon a rock by the way-side and 
 sketch these words, the air is full of melody, the birds are sing- 
 ing thoughtfully, the large grasshoppers make a sonorous merry 
 chirping, and the bells of the goats are tinkling among the herbage 
 and trees on the sides of the mountains. The dewy mist has not 
 yet passed from the grass, but lies in a thin, transparent haze 
 over the meadow. Half way across lies the deep shadow of a 
 mighty mountain peak, over which the sun is rising ; but beyond 
 this shade the chalets and clumps of trees are glittering and 
 smoking in the morning sunshine. The mist-clouds are now 
 lingering only within the ridges of the farthest mountains, while 
 the whole grand outline cuts the deep cloudless blue of heaven. 
 The shafts of light shoot down into the vale, past the angular 
 peaks and defiles. No language can tell the beauty of the view. 
 I could sit here for hours, not desiring to stir a step farther. The 
 mind and heart are filled with its loveliness, and one cannot help 
 blessing God for the great and pure enjoyment of beholding it. 
 If his grace may but sanctify it, it will be like a sweet chapter 
 of his word, and one may go on his way, refreshed as Pilgrim 
 was, when he had gazed over the distant Celestial glory from the 
 Delectable mountains. 
 
 See the smoke rising from the chalets before you ! The sun- 
 light is absolutely a flood of glory over this scene. Oh how 
 lovely ! And still, as I sit and write, new shades of beauty come 
 into view. And now a few steps farther, and what a new and 
 perfect picture ! The vale is almost a complete circle hemmed 
 in by mountains, with the Aar glittering across it like a belt of 
 liquid silver. And now we come down into the valley. How 
 
CHAP, xxiii.] VALE OF HASTI. 97 
 
 rich the vegetation, impearled with the morning dew ! And the 
 little village of Hasli-Grund just at the base of the mountain, with 
 a cloud of smoky light upon it, how beautiful ! Does it not seem as 
 if here could be happiness, if anywhere on earth ? But happiness 
 is a thing within you cannot see it, though you may guess at it, 
 and say within yourself, One might be happy here. It takes many 
 things to constitute the beautiful appearances that make a stranger 
 stop and exclaim, How lovely ! Whereas, it takes but few things 
 to make up real happiness, if all within is right. A crust of bread, 
 a pitcher of water, a thatched roof, and love ; there is happiness 
 for you, whether the day be rainy or sunny. It is the heart that 
 makes the home, whether the eye of the stranger rest upon a 
 potato-patch or a flower-garden. Heart makes home precious, 
 and it is the only thing that can. 
 
 From this point the mountain passes look as winding up to 
 Paradise ; the broken masses of verdure around you are like that 
 " verdurous wall " round Eden, over which Satan made such a 
 pernicious leap. Pass out from the valley, and the scene changes 
 into one of savage wildness and grandeur ; you are wandering 
 among rough, broken mountains, with fearful craggy gorges, 
 through which the Aar furiously rushes ; the guide tells you of 
 perilous falls in tempests, and of deaths by drowning and by the 
 avalanche ; and, to confirm his words, ridge after ridge of barren, 
 savage, scathed peaks present their bare rock ribs, down which 
 are perpetually thundering the avalanches, as if to dispute with 
 the torrent the right of roaring through the valley. Piles of 
 chaotic, rocky fragments, over which the path clambers, bespeak 
 the dates of desolating storms. Now and then the eye and the 
 mind are relieved by the greenness of a forest of firs, but in 
 general the pass is one awful sweep of desolation and sterile sub- 
 limity. It is like the soul of a sinner deserted of God, while the 
 thundering torrent, madly plunging, and never at rest, is like the 
 voice of an awakened angry conscience in such a soul. 
 
 Amidst this desolate and savage scenery, after travelling some 
 four or five hours, with a single interval of rest at Guttanen, we 
 come suddenly upon the celebrated falls of the Aar. There is a 
 point on which they are visible from the verge of the gorge be- 
 low, before arriving at Handek, but it is bv no means so good as. 
 PAET n. 8 
 
98 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxm. 
 
 the points of view above. These points are very accessible, and 
 from a bridge thrown directly over the main fall, you may look 
 down into the abyss where the cataract crashes. A storm of 
 wind and rain rushes furiously up from the spray, but when the 
 sun is shining, it is well worth a thorough wetting, to behold the 
 exquisitely beautiful rainbows which circle the fall beneath. A 
 side torrent comes down from another ravine on the right, meet- 
 ing the Aar fall diagonally, after a magnificent leap by itself over 
 the precipice, so that the cataract is two in one. The height of 
 the fall being about two hundred feet, when the Aar is swollen 
 by rain, this must be by far the grandest and most beautiful 
 cataract in Switzerland. The lonely sublimity of the scenery 
 makes the astounding din and fury of the waters doubly impres- 
 sive. 
 
 A short distance from the falls, a single chalet, which itself is 
 the inn, constitutes the whole village of Handek. From this 
 place up to the Grimsel, the pass increases if possible in wildness 
 and desolation. Vegetation almost entirely ceases. The fir, that 
 beautiful emblem of the true Christian, as it has been called, 
 satisfied with so little of earth, and rising straight to heaven, can 
 no more find a footing. Gloomy bare mountains, silent and naked 
 as death, frown over the pathway, and you seem to be coming to 
 the outermost limits of creation. 
 
 The path crosses a singular, vast, smooth ledge of rock, called 
 the Hollenplatte, nearly a quarter of a mile in extent, about two 
 miles above the Falls, said to have been the bed of an old gla- 
 cier, and to have become worn smooth and polished by the attri- 
 tion of the ice-mountain. The path is hewn along the edge of 
 the precipice. Your guide-book tells you that it is " prudent to 
 dismount here, and cross this bad bit of road on foot, since the 
 path runs by the edge of the precipice, and the surface of the 
 rock, though chiselled into grooves, to secure a footing for the 
 horses, is very slippery. A single false step might be fatal to 
 man and beast, precipitating both into the gulf below : and the 
 slight wooden rail, which is swept away almost every winter, 
 would afford but little protection." A pedestrian, having no care 
 of a mule, is very independent of all these dangers, though he 
 would not wish to cross this place in a tempest ; but the guide- 
 
CHAP, xxiii.] PERPENDICULAR HAYMAKING. 99 
 
 book might have added the account of a traveller, whose mule 
 slipped and fell over the precipice, while he himself was saved 
 only by the presence of mind and sudden firm grasp of his guide, 
 dragging him backwards, even while the mule plunged down the 
 abyss. It is extreme fool-hardiness to go against the directions 
 or cautions of the guide, in a place of danger. 
 
 By and by the path crosses the Aar and recrosses, and at 
 length leaves it on the left, to seek the Hospice of the Grimsel. 
 Vegetation seems annihilated ; but amidst all this frightful sterility 
 you behold upon a rocky shelf far up the side of an almost per- 
 pendicular mountain, a man mowing ! My guide shouted, and 
 suddenly I heard an answer and an echo from above, and lifting 
 up my eyes, there stood the mower, sharpening his scythe, on the 
 brow of the precipice, looking down upon us with great uncon- 
 cern, though the little green spot he was mowing seemed itself so 
 steep, that he was in the greatest peril of sliding into the gulf 
 below. What a strange life many of these mountaineers do lead, 
 an existence more dangerous and precarious than that of the mar- 
 mot and the chamois ! 
 
 " The Earth," said Coleridge, " with its scarred face, is the 
 symbol of the Past ; the Air and Heaven of Futurity." What a 
 striking image is this, amidst such awful scenery as our path has 
 led us through from Hasli-Grund! These scarred crags and 
 mountains, riven as with thunderbolts, and desolate of verdure, 
 are hieroglyphics of man's sins. The whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth in bondage. But this bright air and these blue 
 heavens are still as glorious as when the morning stars sang 
 together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy. Through the 
 grace of Christ, though a man's Past be like the scarred black 
 valley of the Grimsel, his Futurity may be like the Air of 
 Heaven in its purity and radiancy of glory. 
 
100 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Hospice of the Grimsel. Glaciers of the Aar. 
 
 THE Hospice of the Grimsel stands immediately beneath and 
 amidst these desolate and barren mountains, about half an hour 
 from the summit of the pass. Grimly and fearfully they frown 
 upon it, as if to say, the nearer Nature gets to Heaven without 
 Grace, the more you see nothing in her but craggy, gloomy, 
 overwhelming horrors, the emblems of a scarred and guilty Past, 
 more visible and striking, the nearer they come into contrast with 
 the pure and radiant Future. So is a fallen being, unrenewed. 
 So it is with the inveterate and crabbed repugnancies, the black 
 and thunder-riven crags, the desolate and barren peaks, of fallen, 
 guilty, despairing human nature ; no where so awful, as when 
 brought nearest to God, if not clothed with verdure, and brought 
 near to him in Christ. There is a transformation to be wrought, 
 and when the righteousness which Christ imparts is thrown upon 
 this same ruined nature, when his Spirit dwells within it and 
 transfigures it, then Despair departs into hell, and earth, that 
 groaned in bondage, reflects and resembles Heaven. Craggy 
 men become little children, and in the Spirit of Adoption, Abba, 
 Father, is the voice that all the renewed creation sends up to 
 God. 
 
 The Hospice is a rough, strong, rock building, with a few 
 small windows, like a jail, or Spanish Monastery, or hospital for 
 the insane. Altogether, it is the gloomiest, dreariest, most re- 
 pulsive landscape, externally, to be found in any of the passes 
 of Switzerland. The peaks of the mountains rise above it about 
 a thousand feet, it being itself at a bleak elevation above the 
 sea of more than seven thousand ; the rocks around it might 
 remind you of some of Dante's goblins damned, like crouching 
 hippopotamuses, or like gigantic demons chained and weep- 
 
CHAP, xxiv.] HOSPICE OF THE GRIMSEL. 101 
 
 ing, with the tears freezing in their eyelids. There is a little 
 tarn, or black lake, directly behind the Hospice, which looks like 
 Death, black, grim, stagnant, a fit mirror of the desolation around 
 it. No fish live in it, but it is said to be never frozen, though 
 covered deep with snow all winter. A boat like Charon's crosses 
 it, to get at the bit of green pasture beyond, where the cows of 
 the Hospice may be fed and milked for one or two months in the 
 summer. There are admirable materials for goblin tales in this 
 Spitzbergen landscape. 
 
 Within the building, everything is nice and comfortable; a 
 fine little library, enriched, probably by English travellers, with 
 some admirable religious books, a well furnished refectory and 
 abundant table, eighty beds or more, and everything in excellent 
 order. What a fine testimony it is, that the truly religious books 
 one meets with, are mostly in the English language. There are, 
 indeed, in our tongue, perhaps more devotional books, more 
 streams running from the Bible, than in all other languages put 
 together. It was delightful to meet these familiar and loved 
 companions in this desolate pass of the Grimsel. We sat down, 
 about twenty visitors in all, to a plentiful evening meal, with a 
 cup of tea, most refreshing to such a tired traveller as I was. 
 The number of visitors daily at table is from thirty-six to forty. 
 A few days since one hundred persons were here at once, for 
 the night, with half as many guides in addition. 
 
 I liked mine host at the Grimsel ; he seemed to take a fatherly 
 interest in the stranger, and pressed my hand warmly at parting, 
 with many good wishes for my pleasant journey. How it takes 
 away from the mercantile, cold, ^mercenary character of an inn, 
 when the keeper of it is blest with cordial, hospitable manners ! 
 Whether he have the heart of a good Samaritan or not, if he 
 seems to take an interest in you, he gets double interest from you ; 
 it invests the bought fare with a home feeling ; you pay for it 
 ten times as readily as you would to a grumbler, and you leave 
 the house as that of a friend. 
 
 I paid a more hasty visit to the Aar glacier than I could have 
 wished, for it would be worth a sojourn of two or three days to 
 study it ; but I was afraid of the weather. From the Grimsel 
 you may walk to the lower glacier in about three quarters of an 
 
102 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxiv. 
 
 hour, and see at its very source the wild river, up whose furious 
 torrent you have been all day climbing. The termination of the 
 glacier in the valley is of the color of a rhinoceros' hide, from 
 the mixture of rocks and gravel ground up in the ice; and 
 where the river runs out of its mouth, it may give you, as you 
 stand below its huge masses, the idea of a monstrous elephant 
 disporting with his proboscis. The rocks protrude from the ice, 
 constantly dropping as fast as it melts, and forming chaotic 
 masses of fragments beneath. 
 
 This enormous glacier is said to be eighteen miles long, and 
 from two to four in breadth. The great peak of the Finster- 
 Aarhorn, the Aar-peak of Darkness, rises out of it, probably 
 the loftiest of the Oberland Alps, a most sublime object. This 
 is the glacier so interesting for the studies and observations of 
 Agassiz and Hugi, carried on upon it, and for their hotel under 
 a huge rock upon its surface. This is the glacier on which the 
 hut was built by Hugi in 1827, to measure the movement of the 
 masses, and it was found that in 1836 they had advanced 2184 feet. 
 Think of this immeasurable bed of ice, near eighty square miles 
 in extent, and how many hundred feet deep no man may know, 
 moving altogether if it move at all, moving everlastingly, with 
 the motion of life amidst the rigidity and certainty of Death ; 
 crossed also by another glacier, the two throwing up between 
 them a mighty causeway or running ridge of mingled ice and 
 rocks, sometimes eighty feet high ! The Upper and Lower 
 Glaciers together are computed to occupy a space of near 125 
 square miles. They are not so much split into fissures as the 
 glaciers of Chamouny, and therefore they are much more ac- 
 cessible. 
 
 The Hospice of the Grimsel is tenanted from March to No- 
 vember by only a single servant, with provisions and dogs. In 
 March, 1838, this solitary exile was alarmed by a mysterious 
 sound in the evening, like the wailing of a human being in dis- 
 tress. He took his dog and went forth seeking the traveller, 
 imagining that some one had lost his way in the snow. It was 
 one of those warning voices, supposed by the Alpine dwellers to 
 be uttered by the mountains in presage of impending storms or 
 dread convulsions. It was heard again in the morning, and soon 
 
CHAP, xxiv.] ANSWERS TO PRAYER. 103 
 
 afterwards down thundered the Avalanche, overwhelming the 
 Hospice, and crushing every room save the one occupied by the 
 servant. With his dog he worked his way through the snow, 
 thankful not to have been buried alive, and came in safety down, 
 to Meyringen. 
 
 This is the common story. But I have met with more than 
 this, in an interesting little book of Letters and travelling sketches 
 from a Daughter to her Mother. Miss Lament tells us that the 
 lonely tenant of the Hospice occupied himself all winter with his 
 art of wood-carving, having no companions but his dogs, and was 
 able, during the perilous seasons, to save the lives of nearly a 
 hundred persons every year. He said he heard the supernatural 
 voice several times before the fall of the avalanche. It was a 
 great storm, and for four days snowed incessantly. " When he 
 first took out his dog, it showed symptoms of fear ; at last it 
 would not go out at all ; so when he had the third time heard the 
 low voice, which said, " Go into the inner room," he went in, and 
 knelt down to pray. While he was praying, the avalanche fell, 
 and in a moment every place, except the one little room where 
 he was, was filled with snow. He firmly attributed this excep- 
 tion to his prayers and why might it not be so ? Answer not, 
 ye, who suppose a world can only be governed by such laws as 
 ye can comprehend !" 
 
 No ! answer not, except you have faith in God, except you 
 know, yourself) what it is to pray, what it is to live a life of 
 prayer. Then answer, and say that the Power, which loosened 
 the Avalanche, and directed its path, was the same, and none 
 other, which as a protecting hand encircled the place of prayer. 
 The Divine Grace, that led the heart thither, only preceded the 
 Divine Power that summoned the storm. And what an infidel 
 heart must that be, which, having experienced such a protection, 
 would noJ attribute it to prayer ! 
 
104 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxir. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Lake of the Dead. Glacier of the Rhone. Pass of the Furca. 
 
 THE night was cold and cloudless. By the rising moon, the 
 scene of awful desolation around the Hospice, cold as it was, 
 was covered with a veil of loveliness. It is scarcely possible to 
 convey an idea of the beauty of the moonlight night in such a 
 region. This morning the air is of a crystal clearness, but a 
 fathomless, white ocean of cloud fills the valley beneath us, while 
 the grisly sharp peaks and ridges around us and above, rise into 
 a bright shining sky. 
 
 Close at the summit of the pass, about half an hour from the 
 Hospice, 8400 feet above the sea, you coast the margin of a little 
 dark, still lake, into which the bodies of dead travellers, who 
 perished by the way, have been launched for burial. It therefore 
 goes by the name of the Dead Sea, or Lake of the Dead. These 
 names are singularly in keeping with the effect of the scenery 
 upon the mind, so wild, so grim, yet so majestic, so seemingly 
 upon the confines of the supernatural world, where it seems as if 
 imprisoned silent genii, still and awful, were gazing upon you, 
 as if the eye of these heaven-scaling mountains watched you, 
 and would petrify and fasten you, as you flit careful like a 
 spectre across the vast and dream-like landscape. A small 
 glacier, which you have to cross, falls into this Lake and feeds 
 it, and the peak of the Seidelhorn rises above it, with the snowy 
 Schreckhorn towering through the mountain ridges from the Aar 
 glacier. The magnificent white range of the Gries glacier 
 sweeps glittering on the other side. 
 
 A little distance beyond this death-lake you come suddenly 
 upon the view of the glacier of the Rhone, very far below you, 
 a grand and mighty object, with the furious Rhone itself issuing 
 from the ice, like a whole menagerie of wild beasts from their 
 
CHAP, xxv.] GLACIERS OF THE RHONE. 105 
 
 cages. Down it roars, with the joy of liberty, swift and furious 
 through the Valley, leaping, dashing, thundering, foaming. Re- 
 membering the career it runs, how it sometimes floods the valleys 
 like a sea, by how many rivers it is joined, and how it pours 
 dark and turbid into the Lake of Geneva, and out again re- 
 generated as clear as crystal from Switzerland into France, 
 and so into the Mediterranean, it is interesting to stand here far 
 above its mighty cradle, and look down upon its source. The 
 glacier is a stupendous mass of ice-terraces clear across the Val- 
 ley, propped against an overhanging mountain, with snowy peaks 
 towering to the right and left. There is a most striking contrast 
 between the bare desolation of the rocks on the Grimsel side, and 
 the grassy slopes of the mountains in companionship with this 
 glacier/ Your path coasts along its margin, amidst a thick 
 fringe of bushes and flowers, from which you can step down 
 upon the roofs and walls 'of the ice-caverns, and look into the 
 azure crevasses, and hear the fall, the gurgle, and hurrying sub- 
 glacial rush of unconscious streams just born as cold as death. 
 Their first existence is in a symphony of dripping music, a pre- 
 lude to the babble of the running rill, and then, as they grow 
 older, they thunder like the trumpet of a cataract. Far above 
 you, herds of cattle are seen browsing on the steep mountain side, 
 so steep, that it seems as if they must hold on to the herbage to 
 keep from falling. The voices of the herdsmen echo down the 
 Valley ; you half expect to see the whole group slide, like an 
 avalanche, into the glacier below. 
 
 There are, more properly speaking, two glaciers of the Rhone, 
 for as you pass up towards the Furca, you see a rapid stream 
 rushing from a glacier that cuts the sky above you to the right, 
 and pouring cavernous and cataractical, into the Lower Glacier, 
 from whence it afterwards issues in the same stream which con- 
 stitutes the Rhone. From the pass of the Furca, which costs 
 you a hard climb to surmount, there is a grand and varied view 
 of the Finsteraarhorn and the Schreckhorn, with the more distant 
 snowy mountains. From thence into the Valley of the Sidli Alp 
 you have a rapid descent, which carries you over wide steep 
 fields of ice and snow, down which you may glide, if you please, 
 like a falling star, though not so softly. There is a most ex- 
 
106 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxv. 
 
 citing and dangerous delight in flying with your Alpenstock down 
 such an abrupt immense declivity. You feel every moment as 
 if you might plunge headlong, or break through into some con- 
 cealed abyss, to be laid away in crystal on the secret shelves of 
 the deep mountain museum ; but bating that, you enjoy the 
 somewhat perilous excursion, as much as you ever did when a 
 wild, careless boy, plunging into snowbanks, skating with the ice 
 bending beneath you, or sliding fiercely down the steep hill, and 
 shouting at the top of your voice, Clear the coast ! to the mani- 
 fest danger of all astonished passengers. The path along the 
 terra firma of the mountain is also in some parts hazardous, 
 since a single false step, or a slip at the side, might prove fatal. 
 
 On the Furca pass you are at the boundary between the Can- 
 tons Valais and Uri, and you have, within a circle of little more 
 than ten miles around you, the sources of five prominent rivers, 
 some of them among the largest in Europe ; the Rhine, the 
 Rhone, the Reuss, the Ticino, and the Aar ; some tumbling into 
 the Mediterranean, some into the German Sea. You have 
 passed two of their most remarkable feeding glaciers, those of 
 the Rhone and the Aar. The course of the river Reuss you are 
 now to follow in the pass and valley of the St. Gothard. 
 
 Continuing our course from the Furca, for a long distance 
 there is no habitation whatever, except for the swine, or the dead, 
 until you come down to the Realp, a cluster of some dozen 
 houses, where the Capuchin friars have a convent, and own the 
 inn. One of these men, in his coarse brown robe, with a hempen 
 cord about it, entered while I was taking some refreshment, and 
 stepped up to the barometer. Really, the corded friars do often 
 look as if they had been just cut down from the gallows, or were 
 going thereto. What a queer choice of vestments and symbols ! 
 Jt reminds one of the passage concerning "them that draw ini- 
 quity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart-rope." 
 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the rope, the friars may be very 
 kind and hospitable men, when they have the means. 
 
 Seeing him watch the glass, I made to him the very original 
 remark that the weather was very fine. Yes, said he, but we 
 shall have bad weather very soon. Hearing this, I also ran to the 
 barometer, for the sound of bad weather is startling to a pedes- 
 
CHAP, xxv.] ST. GOTHARD. 107 
 
 trian among the mountains, and found indeed that the mercury 
 was falling. Thereupon I at once determined to push on, if pos- 
 sible, to the Devil's bridge, that I might see at least the finest part 
 of the St. Gothard pass while the weather was clear, since little 
 is to be seen when it rains or is misty on the mountains. So my 
 guide led me by a shorter cut across the rocky pastures on the 
 left side of the Urseren Valley, without stopping at Hospenthal, 
 that I might have ample time to survey the pass by daylight. 
 
108 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxvi. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The Devil's Bridge. Savage defiles of the Reuss. 
 
 THE Valley of Urseren, into which we have descended from the 
 Furca, is one of the highest inhabited vales in Switzerland, 4356 
 feet above the level of the sea, perfectly destitute of trees, yet 
 covered with soft green pasturage, and affording subsistence to 
 four dairy-keeping, cattle-rearing, cheese-making villages, with 
 1360 inhabitants. The cheese and red trout are much recom- 
 mended by the guidebooks, but we had satisfied a traveller's ap- 
 petite at the inn of the friars, and were not cognizant of the 
 temptation. The Hospice of the St. Gothard lies a couple of 
 hours farther up the pass, from whence you go down by innti- 
 merable zigzags into sunny Italy. 
 
 We made haste across the river, and through the village of 
 Andermatt, about a mile beyond which you are separated from 
 the Devil's Bridge only by the right shoulder of an inaccessible 
 mountain. From the green, smooth, and open meadows of An- 
 dermatt, you abruptly enter this mountain, through the long gal- 
 lery or tunnel of Urnerloch, hewn in the solid rock over the 
 river Reuss, 180 feet in length, and wide enough for carriages. 
 Before this grand tunnel was bored, the mountain, shutting down 
 perpendicular into the roaring river, had to be passed by a rude 
 suspension gallery of boards outside, hung down by chains 
 amidst the very spray of the torrent. It was a great exploit to 
 double this cape. 
 
 You are not at all prepared for the scene which bursts upon 
 you on the other side, for you have been luxuriating in meadows, 
 and there is no sign of change ; it is really like a hurricane in 
 the West Indies ; you are one moment under a clear sky, you 
 see a black cloud, and down comes the fierce tornado. So from 
 the green and quiet slopes of the sheltered Urseren Valley, after 
 
CHAP, xxvi.] DEVIL'S BRIDGE. 109 
 
 spending a few moments in the darkness of the Urnerloch rock 
 gallery, you emerge at once into a gorge of utter savageness, di- 
 rectly at the Devil's Bridge, and in full view of some of the 
 grandest scenery in all Switzerland. It bursts upon you, I say, 
 like a tropical storm, with all the sublimity of conflicting and 
 volleying thunder-clouds. It is a most stupendous pass. The 
 river, with a great leap over its broken bed of rocks, shoots like 
 a catapult into the chasm against the base of the mountain, by 
 which it is suddenly recoiled at right angles, and plunges, bel- 
 lowing, down the precipitous gorge. 
 
 The new bridge spans the thundering torrent at a height of 
 about 125 feet over the cataract. It is of solid, beautiful ma- 
 sonry, the very perfection of security and symmetry in modern 
 art. But as to sublimity, though there is from it by far the best 
 view of the Cataract of the Reuss, and though, being nearer to 
 that Cataract, it sets you more completely in the midst of the 
 conflicting terrors of the gorge, yet for itself, as to sublimity and 
 daring, it is not to be compared with the simple rude old struc- 
 ture, above which it rises. That was the genuine Devil's Bridge, 
 still standing, a few yards lower down than the new, like an arch 
 in the air, so slight, so frail, so trembling. It is much more in 
 accordance with the scenery than the new, and is so covered with 
 mosses, being made of unhewn stones, which centuries have 
 beaten and grizzled with tempests, that the mountains and the 
 bridge seem all one, all in wild harmony ; whereas the new 
 bridge is grossly smooth, elegant and artificial, almost like a 
 dandy looking at the falls with his eye-glass. The two bridges 
 might stand for personifications of genius and art ; the old bridge, 
 with its insecurity and daring, is a manifest work of Genius ; 
 the new is the evident length to which Art can go, after Genius 
 has set the example. 
 
 The old bridge, the genuine Devil's Bridge, was built in 1118, 
 by the Abbot of Einseideln, perhaps to invite pilgrims from a 
 greater distance to that famous convent. In comparison with the 
 old, it is like one of Campbell's thundering war-odes, the battle 
 of Hohenlinden for example, beside a tedious, prosy, correct de- 
 scription, or like Bruce's Address to his army, or like the yell of 
 an Indian war-whoop, compared with the written speeches of 
 
110. PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxvi. 
 
 commanders in Sallust. The upper bridge spans the cataractical 
 performance of the Reuss at an angle in the mountain, where 
 naturally there is not one inch of space for the sole of the foot, 
 but a perpendicular cliff, against which the torrent rages, and in 
 which the only way of blasting the rock, and scooping out a 
 shelf or gallery for the passage on the other side, was by lower- 
 ing down the workmen with ropes from the brow of the mountain, 
 where, hanging over the boiling gulf, they bored the granite, and 
 fixed their trains of powder. 
 
 The old bridge was only one arch thrown across the gorge, and 
 but just broad enough to admit of two persons passing each other 
 in safety, with scarcely any protection at the sides, and at a 
 height of about a hundred feet above the torrent. It was a dizzy 
 thing to pass it, and for persons of weak nerves dangerous, and 
 to get upon it you coasted the gulf of zigzag terraces. The new 
 bridge is of two arches, with safe and strong parapets, and of 
 ample width for carriages. Till the first bridge was made there 
 was no passing this terrific chasm, no communication possible 
 from one side to the other. 
 
 Who could have supposed that into this savage den, amidst its 
 roar of waters, so distant from the world, so unsuitable for a bat- 
 tle field, there could have been poured the conflicting tides of the 
 French Revolution, in a condensed murderous strife between two 
 armies ! Twice in the space of a little more than a month was 
 the war campaign of 1799 driven through this pass by the 
 French, Russians, and Austrians, conquering alternately. First 
 in August the French charged the Austrians, and driving them 
 across the Devil's Bridge, rushed pell mell after them, when the 
 arch fell midway and precipitated the wedged masses of the 
 soldiery into the boiling torrent. Then in September, that great 
 war- wolf Suwarrow poured down with his starved Russians from 
 the top of the St. Gothard. They devoured the soap in the vil- 
 lage of Andermatt, and boiled and ate the tanned leather and raw 
 hides, and in the strength of these aliments, drove the French 
 across the Devil's Bridge, and rushed themselves to the passage. 
 The French in their retreat broke down the bridge by blasting 
 the arch, but this put no stop to the impetuous fury of the Rus- 
 sians, who crossed the chasm on beams of wood tied together 
 
CHAP, xxvi.] WAR AND WISDOM. Ill 
 
 with the officers' scarfs, and in their rage to come at their ene- 
 mies plunged hundreds of the foremost ranks of their own 
 columns into the foaming cataract. It was more fearful meet- 
 ing the fury of their enemies in this conflict, than having their 
 path over the mountains swept by the dread avalanches. The 
 war of human beings was worse than that of nature, though 
 they had to encounter both. They dared the fight of the ava- 
 lanches, that they might fight with each other. Such is human 
 passion, such is war ! 
 
 Yet the world has deified its warriors, and starved its benefac- 
 tors and poets. What sort of proportion is there between the 
 benefit conferred upon the English nation by the Duke of Marl- 
 borough in the victory of Blenheim, and that bestowed upon Eng- 
 land and the world by John Milton in the gift of Paradise Lost ? 
 None at all. The work done by the Poet is so infinitely superior 
 to that accomplished by the Warrior, that you can scarcely insti- 
 tute a comparison. 
 
 And yet the Parliament and Queen of Great Britain bestowed 
 upon the Duke of Marlborough after the battle of Blenheim a 
 royal domain with royal revenues, besides devoting five hundred 
 thousand pounds sterling to build a palace fit for so great a war- 
 rior to live in ; while John Milton was obliged to sell the copy- 
 right of his great poem for ten pounds, and died comparatively 
 unknown and poor ! In England, by that great poem, thousands 
 of people have been literally gaining their subsistence, and mak- 
 ing their fortunes, to say nothing of the tens of thousands, whose 
 minds have been invigorated and enlarged by feeding on it, while 
 by the great victory, and the magnificent reward of it, revenues 
 that might have supported thousands have been devoted exclu- 
 sively to the luxury and splendor of a single family ! So went 
 the war- worshipping era of our world. At present it may be 
 hoped, if poetry is not rising, war at least is at a discount. 
 
112 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxvn. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Legends of the pass. Cowper's Memoria Technica. 
 
 AFTER the gorge of the Devil's Bridge, you plunge down the 
 precipitous valley, by well constructed zigzags, crossing and re- 
 crossing the Reuss repeatedly, till you come to the savage defile 
 of Schellinen, where for several miles the ravine is so deep and 
 narrow, that the cliffs seem to arch the heavens, and shut out the 
 light. The Reuss meanwhile keeps such a roaring din, making 
 in the short space of four leagues a fall of 2500 feet, almost in 
 a perpetual cataract, that the people have called this part of the 
 way the Krachenthal, or crashing valley. The noise and the 
 accompaniments are savage enough. The mountains seem ready 
 to tumble into the bed of the river. " We tremble," said my 
 companion under the influence of the scenery of the Gemmi, 
 " lest the mountains should crush us ; what must be that state of 
 despair in men's hearts, which can call on the mountains to fall 
 on them and bury them, rather than meet the face of God ?" 
 
 There are curious legends in this part of the valley. Enor- 
 mous fragments of rock are strewn around, as if they might have 
 fallen here from the conflict of Titans, or angels, when they 
 plucked the seated hills with all their load to throw at each other. 
 One of them, almost a mountain by itself, nearly in the road, 
 goes by the name of Teufelstein, or Devil's Stone, having been 
 dropped, it is said, by the overworked demon, in attempting to get 
 it across the St. Gothard pass. The legend runs that he set out 
 to convey this crag across the valley for a wager, but let it slip, 
 and lost the game. The manner in which the traveller gazes 
 upon this rock, in consequence even of this foolish legend, the 
 peculiar interest he feels in it, is a curious example of the power 
 of imaginative association, the craving of the mind for some in- 
 telligent moral or meaning. In all things possible you must have 
 
CHAP, xxvii.] THE TEUFELSTEIN. 113 
 
 a human or a supernatural interest. The principle is universal. 
 A child in the nursery would not be half so much interested by 
 a simple engraving of a house, ever so well done, with merely 
 the announcement, This is a house, as when you come to say, 
 This is the house that Jack built ; then what an interest ! Then 
 how the imagination peoples it ! There is Jack, the malt, the 
 cat, the rat, the priest, the milk-maid, and this is the cosy house, 
 where all the wonders of the linked story had their existence. 
 What a place of interest ! Just so with the Devil's Crag. 
 Ridiculous as the legend is, no man can pass that stone, without 
 being interested in it, and perhaps seeing his disappointed Infer- 
 nal Majesty in idea, with sail broad vans in the air above him, 
 sweating like a day laborer, and ineffectually struggling to float 
 beneath the weight. The common legends concerning the Devil 
 do almost always represent him as outwitted, foiled, and cheated, 
 instead of being successful in his villainy ; it is a good sign 
 and prediction, for he must go down. 
 
 At Wasen I found a comfortable, excellent inn, a good, cheer- 
 ful happy family, and a kind, hospitable host. They seemed 
 well to do in the world, and were Romanists, as are most of the 
 people of the Canton Uri. I went to bed thinking of the Capu- 
 chin's promise of bad weather, and glad that I had seen the St. 
 Gothard pass in bright day. In the morning the Friar's predic- 
 tion was still unaccomplished. Again the morning was fair, though 
 the clouds were clinging to the mountains up and down the val- 
 ley, sometimes in long ridges, sometimes in thick fleecy volumes, 
 now surrounding the base half way down, now revealing only 
 the lofty peaks, and now swept from the whole face of the gorge, 
 and admitting the bright' sun to fill it. At this moment, on the 
 edge of the mountain top beside us, so lofty and perpendicular 
 that it seems ready to fall, the sun is struggling with the fleecy 
 masses of cloud glowing like silver, and the trees upon the verge 
 of the cliff seem on fire as in a burning focus, while all around 
 is grey mist. 
 
 We are now coming into a region trodden of old by great pa- 
 triots, and consecrated at this day, to liberty, in history. We 
 are getting upon the borders of the country of William Tell ; 
 we must not look at the scenery alone, for grand as it is, the 
 PART n. 9 
 
114 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxvn. 
 
 great thoughts and struggles of freedom are grander. In truth, 
 a man ought not to travel through such a region without a fresh 
 memory of connected localities and incidents. How much a 
 man needs to know, to make a good traveller ! Or rather, how 
 much he needs to remember, and how vividly ! The Poet Cow- 
 per, in one of his beautiful letters, recommends pedestrianizing as 
 good for the memory. " I have," says he, " though not a good 
 memory in general, yet a good local memory, and can recollect, 
 by the help of a tree, or a stile, what you said on that particular 
 spot. For this reason I purpose, when the summer is come, to 
 walk with a book in my pocket ; what I read at my fire-side, I 
 forget, but what I read under a hedge, or at the side of a pond, 
 that pond and that hedge will always bring to my remembrance." 
 
 But suppose the gentle Poet wishes to recall the passages in 
 some other part of the country. It would certainly be somewhat 
 clumsy to have to carry about with you a pond or a hedge as a 
 memoria technica ; it would be less inconvenient to carry your 
 whole library. And besides, what art shall there be to quicken 
 the memory in knowledges already forgotten ? The memory is 
 a most perverse faculty ; it treasures up things we could wish to 
 forget, and forgets things we could wish to retain ; but there is 
 one chain, that no man can escape, except he goes to Jesus 
 Christ, and that is, the memory of his own sins. To many a 
 man, to all men " in their sins," the art of forgetting, could it 
 but last for ever, would be the greatest of all blessings. 
 
 What an affecting page in the history of an individual mind 
 is presented in those melancholy remorseful stanzas, said to have 
 been written in a blank leaf of the Pleasures of Memory. They 
 trace the human being ; they present a more universal experience 
 of our fallen nature by far, than the more agreeable, but more 
 superficial recollections of childhood and of later days. They 
 are as a fossil leaf, in which you observe the fibres, that charac- 
 terized a whole living family of the vegetable creation. So do 
 these stanzas read the experience of our species, not indeed, 
 always so clearly acknowledged, even to one's own conscious- 
 ness, but always existing, though sometimes like sympathetic let- 
 ters, to be only revealed when brought to the fire. 
 
CHAP, xxvii.] - PENAL POWER OF MEMORY. 115 
 
 " Pleasures of memory ! O supremely blest, 
 And justly proud beyond a poet's praise, 
 If the pure confines of thy tranquil breast 
 Contain indeed the subject of thy lays ! 
 By me how envied, for to me, 
 The herald still of misery, 
 Memory makes her influence known 
 By sighs and tears and grief alone. 
 I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong 
 The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funeral song. 
 Alone, at midnight's haunted hour, 
 
 When nature woos repose in vain, 
 Remembrance wakes her penal power, 
 
 The tyrant of the burning brain. 
 She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, 
 
 Of fair occasions gone for ever by, 
 Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crost, 
 Of many a cause to wish, yet fear, to die. 
 For what, except the instinctive fear 
 Lest she survive, detains me here, 
 When all the life of life is fled ? 
 What but the deep inherent dread, 
 Lest she beyond the grave resume her reign, 
 And realize the hell, that priests and beldams feign." 
 
 How painfully impressive is this ! The penal power of re- 
 membrance is a terrible reality. It has driven many a mind to 
 thoughts of suicide. But why think of suicide to escape from 
 memory, when the penal power of memory is only a prophecy 
 of the future ? It is to be earnestly hoped that the self tortured 
 unknown individual, who traced from bitter unavailing experience 
 the gloomy lines just quoted, may have sought and found in 
 Christ that deliverance from the death of sin and the fear of 
 death, with which, only the Lamb of God, who taketh away the 
 sin of the world, can bless the soul. 
 
116 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxvin. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Associations. Canton Uri, and the memories of Tell. 
 
 How infinite are the moral and spiritual relations even of mate- 
 rial things ! Indeed, what subject is there, says Edmund Burke, 
 that does not branch into infinity ? A world that has been the 
 habitation of intelligent creatures, becomes connected in every 
 part with the story and the influences of their existence. Nature 
 herself sympathizes with them, is invested with the significance 
 of their immortality, travaileth in bondage beneath their sins and 
 burdens, and acquires the language both of their history and 
 destiny. Point after point, feature after feature, landscape after 
 landscape, the whole world of land, and every rood of sea, may 
 become, in the course of ages, indissolubly linked with some great 
 transaction, and with a crowd of the soul's experiences, in such 
 wise, that ever, as long as the globe lasts, it shall be, as it were, 
 an organ, the keys of which are always sounding their intelli- 
 gent notes of guilty and sad, or innocent and joyous meaning. 
 All thought is eternal, and if the soul have forgotten it, material 
 nature will sometimes bring it up. The wicked may be silent 
 in the grave, but the grave shall not be silent in regard to the 
 wicked. The actors of a life of heroism and goodness pass 
 away, but the earth always speaks of them. 
 
 Such is the eternal, indestructible power of association. Fear- 
 fully and wonderfully are we made, and strangely linked with 
 the world that we inhabit. So, according to the multitude and 
 nobleness of a man's associations, especially of a moral charac- 
 ter, will be the depth and thoughtfulness of his delight in looking 
 upon nature. There is a scenery in the mind, connected with 
 that in nature, and appropriate to it, somewhat as the other parts 
 of a piece of music are connected with the air, and dependent 
 upon it. A man might be able to whistle the air alone, and 
 might have enjoyment in singing it, but if he is ignorant of the 
 
CHAP, xxviii.] HISTORICAL TRAVEL. 117 
 
 other parts, his pleasure cannot equal that of a musical mind, in 
 which all the parts come linked together in one full and perfect 
 harmony. 
 
 A traveller should be prepared to read the book of nature with 
 the historical harmony. An ignorant or forgetful man sees 
 nothing but the scene before him, when the historical student sees 
 it peopled with great forms, sees it in grand moral lights and 
 shades, surrounded by the many-colored atmosphere of the past, 
 as well as the light of the day's sun that is shining upon it. 
 When a man visits Altorf, he needs to be for the time thrown 
 back into the past ; but this is impossible, unless the past is in 
 him as the fruit of his studies, taken into his being. The guide 
 books will repeat to him the name of Tell and the facts in his 
 history ; the inscriptioa will inform him that such and such great 
 events took place amidst the scenes he is visiting ; but this does 
 not give him the past, does not make up that inward .scenery 
 with which his mind has need to have been familiar, in order 
 that the place may call heroic times and interests into being. 
 How much greater is the enjoyment of a mind that has the whole 
 of such a drama as Schiller's William Tell fresh in memory, 
 w r hile wandering over the Canton Uri, than his that has but a few 
 dry dates and names, or worse than all is dependent on the monu- 
 ments, the guides, and the Handbooks ! 
 
 A man visits Zurich ; he goes into the Cathedral ; what a loss 
 to him, if for the first time he learns that Zwingle there preached, 
 or knows nothing about the history of Zwingle, and the scenes 
 of the reformation ! He visits Einseidlen ; seeks the shrine of 
 the Virgin, sees the monks at worship ; what a loss to him, if his 
 studies in history have failed to people the scene to his own mind 
 from the great life that for a time was there passing ! A man 
 crosses the Wengern Alp. If he has never read the tragedy of 
 Manfred, there is a grand scenery created from the poet's mind, 
 in respect of which he crosses before the Jungfrau with his eyes 
 shut. A man passes into Athens and stands on the Acropolis. 
 What a loss to him, if his studies have never made him familiar 
 with the age of Pericles ! Nay, there is a recollection of objects 
 around him, that have absolutely no meaning, no story, no lesson, 
 no language to his mind, if many a page of Grecian history be 
 
118 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxvm. 
 
 not in his remembrance. A man wanders into Egypt, up and 
 down the Nile, into old majestic Thebes, with its dim colossal 
 ruins. What an inappreciable, irretrievable loss to him, if he 
 never read Herodotus, or is destitute of a knowledge of the com- 
 bined prophetic and actual history of that antique marvellous 
 country, with its gigantic, monstrous types of thought and being ! 
 
 " Labor to distil and unite into thyself/' says ancient Fuller, 
 " the scattered perfections of several nations. Many weed 
 foreign countries, bringing home Dutch drunkenness, Spanish 
 pride, French wantonness, and Italian Atheism ; as for the good 
 herbs, Dutch industry, Spanish loyalty, French courtesy, and 
 Italian frugality, these they leave behind them ; others bring 
 home just nothing ; and because they singled not themselves 
 from their countrymen, though some years beyond sea, were 
 never out of England." This is the great folly of travelling 
 withou^ 'a foreign language, that it compels a stranger to keep 
 company only with his own countrymen, so that he returns home 
 with all his prejudices. 
 
 We are still in the magnificent pass of the St. Gothard, and it 
 continues to present a character at once picturesque and beauti- 
 ful, wild and savage. The gorges are tremendous, the bridges 
 thrown across the torrent frequent and bold. Here and there, 
 dark forests of fir cling to the mountains, and sometimes you see 
 the savage jagged paths of recent avalanches. Now and then, 
 there is a little chapel on the mountain's brow ; the evening 
 chime of bells comes ringing up the valley ; you meet corded 
 brown friars walking and women working on the roads. The 
 sun is pouring through rifts in the clouds, and the dark blue sky 
 opens. 
 
 I cannot help noting the variety and contrast of colors offered 
 to the eye in such a scene ; the azure of the sky, the violet moun- 
 tains, of a hue as deep as the heart's ease, the grisly grey rocks, 
 the black firs, the deep blue gorges, the pale verdure of the trees, 
 the deeper delicious green of the grassy slopes and meadow 
 patches, the white virgin snow, the dim mists, the silvery clouds, 
 the opal of the morn, the golden lights of evening. What an in- 
 termingling of lovely hues and shades ! At some distance below 
 Wasen the mountains are singularly grand. Far down the 
 
CHAP, xxvm.] TELL'S BIRTHPLACE. 119 
 
 Valley, a pyramidal peak of bare granite guards the way to the 
 heroic region, and now the green and flowery mottled slopes, with 
 the thick luxuriant foliage and fruits of the walnut, chestnut, 
 pear, and other trees, begin to spread out more largely. Here 
 is a sweet picturesque spot, wildly beautiful. The smell of the 
 new made hay, as it lies upon the green sward, is full of fra- 
 grance. Here and there it is gathered into small grotesque 
 stacks, to be carried on the shoulders. I have seen women, with 
 their heads and shoulders buried beneath enormous bundles of 
 this short grass, laboring along the path at the brink of precipices, 
 where a single step would plunge bundle and carrier into the 
 gulf below. Now and then comes to the ear the pleasant music 
 of the mower whetting his scythe. 
 
 The Valley opens out immediately at Amsteg, where the 
 ascent towards Andermatt, in the direction you have passed, com- 
 mences. From this to Altorf the way winds luxuriant through 
 a well wooded and cultivated region. You visit the village of 
 Burglen, where William Tell was born. It is a beautiful rural 
 hamlet, of most magnificent verdure, higher up among the moun- 
 tains than Altorf, and commanding a rich leafy view of the Val- 
 ley below. The church is in front, and in sight is the village 
 of Attighausen, where Walter Furst was born. A little chapel 
 stands on the spot formerly occupied by TelPs house. Why 
 could they not have let the house remain as it was, and put the 
 chapel in the churchyard ? It is covered with very rude paint- 
 ings, descriptive of various scenes in TelPs life, accompanied 
 with sentences from Scripture. On the front of the chapel is the 
 text, " We are called unto liberty but by love serve one 
 another." How admirable and appropriate ! Called unto liberty, 
 to serve in love ! A blessed world this will be, when all tyranny 
 and oppression end in that. A blessed inheritance it is, when 
 the Patriot leaves that to his countrymen. 
 
120 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxix. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Traditions of Freedom. Religious liberty the garrison of civil. 
 
 LESS than half an hour's walk now brings you to Altorf, name 
 so sacred in Swiss story, where you pass through the very square 
 in which the heroic father shot the apple from his child's head. 
 There the figures stand, above the fountain ; the rudest carica- 
 ture of statuary could not deprive them of interest. And there 
 is the old tower, said to stand where the linden tree grew, to 
 which the noble boy was bound by the tyrant Gessler, as the 
 mark for the father's archery. The Child was father of the 
 Man, for had he not stood steadfast and smiling, the father's heart 
 had faltered. You must have your own boyish enthusiasm fresh 
 about you, with which you used to read the story at school, if 
 you would visit these spots now with proper feelings, or with en- 
 joyment like that which the story itself once gave you. 
 
 And what an admirable tale ! In all the romantic or heroic 
 eras of nations there never were finer materials of poetry. What 
 a pity there could not have been some Homer to take them up, 
 to give them the charmed shape and being of truth wrought by 
 the imagination into epic song ! Schiller has done much in his 
 masterly drama, but the subject is that almost of an historical 
 epic. Schiller was eminently successful in the delineation of 
 the child, as well as the patriot. Happy is the country, that has 
 such memories to cherish as those of Wallace, Leonidas, and 
 Tell, and is still worthy of them ! Unhappy and degraded is the 
 land, from which, though the letter of such memories may re- 
 main, the soul of them in the people hath departed ! It is sad to 
 say of a country, It has been free. It is sad to say of a country, 
 as of an individual, that 
 
 " The wiser mind 
 
 Mourns less for what age takes away, 
 Than what it leaves behind." 
 
 
CHAP, xix.] CRITICAL INFIDELITY. 121 
 
 The critics are trying to mystify the historical grandeur of 
 Switzerland, casting the blur of doubt and scepticism over its 
 heroic traditions, questioning whether Tell and the Apple ever 
 existed. A country of critical unbelievers that could produce a 
 Strauss, to turn Christ and the Apostles into a myth-mist, will dis- 
 pose easily of all less sacred story. There is no feat, which such 
 infidelity cannot perform ; it would put a lie into the lips of na- 
 ture herself. Ruthless work it makes when it turns the plough- 
 share of ruin through loved and hallowed associations. But true 
 patriotism and poetry, as well as Divine Truth, are too much for 
 it ; it can no more strike the memories of Tell from the mind of 
 Switzerland, than it could abolish the earth's strata, or annihilate 
 her veins of gold and diamond. Ever will these heroic traditions 
 remain, ever in the faith of the Swiss hearts, ever in the glens of 
 the mountains, ever in the books and ballads of the cottages, as 
 indestructible as the Alps, as far kenned and brightly shining as 
 the light of those flowers that poets tell of : 
 
 " Of flowers, that with one scarlet gleam 
 Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 
 To set the hills on fire." 
 
 Even so beautiful, so far seen, so inspiring, like beacons on the 
 mountain tops, are these historical traditions. What wickedness 
 it would be to sweep them from the soul of the country ! On a 
 clear moonlight night, it is said you can even now sometimes see 
 the stalwart form of Tell in his native valley bending his great 
 cross-bow and trying the strength of his arrows. It would re- 
 quire no great power of Imagination to see beneath the moon on 
 the meadow of Grutli the immortal group of three, Tell, Furst, 
 and Melcthal, with solemn faces and hands uplift to heaven, tak- 
 ing that great oath of Liberty, which was the testament oY free- 
 dom to their country. 
 
 All things considered, it is well and noble that the public 
 authorities in Uri should have ordered to be burned a book by 
 the son of the celebrated Haller, criticising the story of Tell so 
 as to injure the popular version. Let the rulers and the people 
 but keep the right spirit of the tradition which they guard with 
 such jealousy, and let them unite the freedom of the State and 
 
122 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxix. 
 
 of the personal franchise on their mountains with the spirit of 
 piety, with freedom to worship God according to conscience, and 
 they will show themselves worthy of the inheritance which old 
 patriots transmitted to them. How true, how precious, how 
 noble, is that sonnet of Wordsworth on the obligations of Civil to 
 Religious Liberty, in which he apostrophizes his native land for 
 the dear memory of her sons, who for her civil rights have bled, 
 and then passes to the great truth that all uselessly would these 
 great souls have fallen in the conflict, if it had not been after- 
 wards sustained and carried onward by religious principle ; if 
 the freedom fought for on earth had not been lighted from other 
 worlds and linked with heaven. So must claims from other 
 worlds inspirit the Star of Liberty in Switzerland, or not long 
 will it remain above the horizon. 
 
 " How like a Roman Sydney bowed his head. 
 And Russel's milder blood the scaffold wet! 
 But these had fallen for profitless regret, 
 Had not thy holy church her champions bred, 
 And claims from other worlds inspirited 
 The Star of Liberty to rise. Nor yet, 
 (Grave this within thy heart !) if spiritual things 
 Be lost through apathy, or scorn, or fear, 
 Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support, 
 However hardly won, or justly dear. 
 What came from Heaven, to Heaven by nature clings, 
 And if dissevered thence, its course is short." 
 
 Graver, deeper, more important truth than this was never con- 
 densed into the like human composition. Study it, ye politicians 
 and statesmen, and not only statesmen but Christians, and not 
 only in the Old World, but the New ! In England, in Geneva, 
 in America, wherever there is liberty in possession or liberty in 
 danger, study this. If spiritual things le lost, through apathy, or 
 scorn, or fear, or formalism, your humbler civil privileges you 
 never can support, at what costly price soever they may have 
 been won, or however dear they may be to you. Let souls be 
 persecuted for religion, or your religion merged into a State 
 Sacrament, or a church commandment fastened by the State, and 
 your State will be a despotism and yourselves slaves. Your 
 
CHAP, xxix.] TELL'S TOWER. J23 
 
 true freedom must come from God, and cling to God, and leave 
 the soul alone and undisturbed with God, for God's Spirit alone 
 can support it. 
 
 " What came from Heaven to Heaven by nature clings, 
 And if dissevered thence, its course is short !" 
 
 I will not omit to add the very beautiful third stanza of those 
 suggested to Wordsworth by TelPs tower at Altorf, on which the 
 deeds of the hero are painted. It was not indeed an Italian pen- 
 cil that wrought the paintings, but neither was it an Italian heart 
 that wrought the actions. TelPs boy was the heir of his father's 
 courage, and the very personification of cheerful filial faith and 
 love. 
 
 " How blest the souls, who, when their trials come, 
 Yield not to terror or despondency, 
 But face, like that sweet Boy, their mortal doom, 
 Whose head the ruddy apple tops, while he 
 Expectant stands beneath the Linden tree, 
 Not quaking, like the timid forest game ; 
 He smiles, the hesitating shaft to free, 
 Assured that heaven its justice will proclaim, 
 And to his Father give its own unerring aim." 
 
 Before coming to Altorf, you cross a rapid stream, in which it 
 is said that William Tell lost his life in his old age by endeavor- 
 ing to save a child from drowning, when the waters were high. 
 This was in 1350. He was born about the year 1280. The village 
 of Burglen, his birth-place, is a most lovely spot in a vale of 
 luxuriant vegetation, surrounded by great mountains, and fit to 
 educate a spirit like TelPs. Here a man must live in the Past, 
 the great Past, and hope for the future. Would that TelPs great 
 spirit could return from the dead, " to animate an age forlorn," 
 to waken his native vales again with the echoes of genuine 
 liberty ! Would that such a spirit might rise, to break the fet- 
 ters from the souls of his countrymen, worse, by far, than those 
 on the body. 
 
 " Theje is a bondage worse by far to bear 
 Than his, who breathes, by roof and floor and wall 
 
124 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxix. 
 
 Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary thrall: 
 
 'Tis his, who walks about in the open air, 
 
 One of a nation who, henceforth, must wear 
 
 Their fetters in their souls. For who can be, 
 
 Who, even the best, in such condition, free 
 
 From self-reproach, reproach which he must share 
 
 With human nature ? Never be it ours 
 
 To see the sun how brightly it will shine 
 
 And know that noble feeling, manly powers, 
 
 Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine, 
 
 And earth with all her pleasant fruits and flowers 
 
 Fade and participate in Man's decline." 
 
 But what is this bondage worse by far to bear ? It is the 
 bondage of the mind and heart in superstition ; it is the absence 
 of religious freedom ; it is the iron age of intolerance, and the 
 chaining of the soul in a spiritual despotism more rigid and ter- 
 rible than that of nature in the glaciers. This is worse to bear. 
 There never can be freedom in Switzerland, till there is freedom 
 to worship God. There never can be freedom, till there is the 
 religion of voluntary faith, instead of a despotic form, into which 
 you are pressed and held fast by penal law. It is a glorious 
 word, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is LIBERTY ; and 
 now a spiritual Tell is needed in Switzerland, as in Rome, to 
 proclaim this to his countrymen, to tell them in what that liberty 
 consists, and to show them that an infidel mob, and a church with 
 penal persecuting maxims, are alike opposed to it and deadly, 
 whether under a monarchy, a despotism or a republic. 
 
 They have in Switzerland Romish Republics, but is republi- 
 canism a cure for intolerance ? Will it unloose the fettered 
 souls of the people ? No more than the mountain winds and the 
 summer months unbind the glaciers. In almost every Romish 
 Republican state in Switzerland the profession of Protestantism 
 is followed by the loss of the rights of citizenship, as well as in- 
 capacity to fill any public office in the State. I speak the lan- 
 guage of a Swiss citizen himself, who reminds me of the example 
 of his own Christian friend, M. Pfyffer, formerly a Professor of 
 history in the College at Lucerne, but who, on becoming a Pro- 
 testant, lost both his place of professor and his rights as a citizen. 
 He went to live at Lausanne, a voluntary exile from a country, 
 
CHAP, xxix.] INTOLERANCE. 125 
 
 where he would inevitably be persecuted. Nevertheless, they 
 have at Lucerne the most republican institution, they have uni- 
 versal suffrage, but in addition to this, they have Romanism and 
 the Jesuits. Give to these agents the requisite majority of votes 
 and supremacy of power, and the freaks of persecution may be 
 even more startling and ferocious in a republic than a monarchy. 
 Universal suffrage, once fired by the spirit of intolerance, may 
 be worse than State edicts on a people, with whom to hear is to 
 obey. They wear their fetters in their souls, who wear them as 
 a part of the mob that forged them. Many masters are more 
 intolerable than one. 
 
 Every part of earth, every heritage of intelligent freemen, 
 that has been visited with the fires of religious persecution, and 
 every spot on earth that has not, ought to dread all approximation 
 to the union of Church and State ; for power converts even de- 
 votion into superstition and fanaticism, and they that have got 
 free themselves run to fasten their cast off fetters upon others. 
 If the Church does not persecute through the State, the State will 
 oppress the Church, will make it a political tool, or nothing. 
 Read the commentary in the Canton de Vaud, where a democra- 
 tic State, not Roman Catholic, enacts the persecuting antics of the 
 English Church and State under Queen Elizabeth, while the 
 people are permitted by the State to mob the assemblies of volun- 
 tary Christians ! Where the Church relies on the State for sup- 
 port, it is an abject creature, fawning, and ready to be perse- 
 cuted ; where it is a part of the State by Establishment, and 
 holds the legislative and executive power, it is a ferocious crea- 
 tnre, ready to persecute ; it is the cat or the tiger, as circum- 
 stances require ; it will catch mice for the State, and sleep by 
 the fire-side, or it will abide in jungles and play the Oriental 
 Despot. 
 
 This is not the true Church of Christ, but the Church cor- 
 rupted, for his kingdom is not of this world. When the powers 
 of this world, instead of being sanctified by the Spirit of Christ/ 
 and so put in subjection to his authority, are committed to the 
 Church and subjected to the use of the Church under her au- 
 thority, that is not the advancement of Christ's kingdom, nor is 
 that the way in which Christ's kingdom can advance , for Christ's 
 
126 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxix. 
 
 kingdom is spiritual, in the hearts of men, and not in the govern- 
 ment of empires, which government, just so far as it is committed 
 to the Church, is but the act and voice of the Tempter, All these 
 things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 
 
 All error is intolerant ; but even the Truth, if put into form 
 without love, will roast men alive with no more remorse than 
 error itself. So it is only the truth in love, that can make men 
 free. Put into form, and fought for as form, without love, it may 
 make men as bitter, as violent, as malignant, as intolerant, as any 
 despotism of hierarchical error. Because it becomes a selfish 
 thing, a proud thing, a thing of meum and tuum, a thing of con- 
 quest, a possession of selfishness and pride. 
 
 All the fighting for truth done without love, is not for God, but 
 for self and Satan. If you really love the truth, you will love 
 it under other forms besides your own ; you will not fight to im- 
 pose your form on others. But if you belong to a form without 
 love, and set out to extend the truth in your form, you inevitably 
 become intolerant, and if you had the power, you would be a 
 fierce persecutor. There is no safety for the world against your 
 intolerance, but in your weakness. 
 
 We want protection for our religious convictions, not only 
 against intolerance imposing an established form, not only against 
 the Church without love, the Church as an Inquisition, the 
 Church as .a Despotism, but also against the intolerance of the 
 people, against the caprices of popular liberty associated with 
 power. We want a religious liberty above and separate from a 
 political liberty, and which can no more be invaded by it, than 
 a man's dwelling-house can be torn down with impunity, or a 
 church or a city fired by a mob. This is impossible, when the 
 Church is dependent on the State. The State will, if it pleases, 
 direct the Church what to teach, and how to teach it, and if she 
 refuses, will punish, will persecute. The State may be the 
 purest of republics, and yet may indulge in the most atrocious 
 despotism in matters of religion. Therefore, a constitutional 
 State must have no power to meddle with religion at all, except 
 to protect its quiet worship. The whole world must inevitably 
 come to this conclusion, and then the whole world will be still. 
 Then love will reign, and truth will burn brightly. The State 
 
CHAP, xxix.] RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND POWER. 127 
 
 itself will more readily become religious, when it is deprived of 
 all power to modify and govern religion. 
 
 How impressively are these truths illustrated by what is now 
 going on in Germany and Switzerland ! God in his providence 
 is showing us that neither Evangelical Protestantism, nor Roman- 
 isrn, nor Rationalism, whether under a republic or a despotism, 
 can be entrusted with State power. The State cannot be en- 
 trusted with power over the Church for, some way or other, it 
 will act the tyrant. The Church cannot be entrusted with power 
 over the State, or with the use of the State to enforce her rubrics 
 or her teachings ; for the Church also, sooner or later, acts the 
 tyrant, when tempted to it. The temptation comes under the 
 guise of an angel, under the plausible pretence of uniformity in 
 worship, and the advancing of the Redeemer's kingdom. So 
 much the more dangerous it is, so much the more earnestly and 
 carefully to be repelled. Religion is a voluntary thing, both in 
 form and doctrine. Let every State and every Church respect it 
 as such, and cease from enforcing it, and leave to Christianity 
 
 The Word of God ONLY 
 
 The Grace of Christ ONLY 
 
 The Work of the Spirit ONLY, 
 
 and then intolerance and strife will cease, truth and love will pre- 
 vail, error will die out of existence, and throughout all nations 
 the kingdom of Christ will come. 
 
128 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP xxx. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Lake of Uri and town of Lucerne. 
 
 FROM Altorf a short walk brings you to Fluellen, the low un- 
 healthy part of the Reuss Valley, on the celebrated Lake of 
 Lucerne. You embark, morning or evening, in the steamer for 
 the town of Lucerne at the other end, to enjoy a sail amidst the 
 almost unequalled scenery and unrivalled historical associations, 
 by which it is surrounded. You embark where Gessler em- 
 barked, with Tell in chains, you pass the table rock, where Tell 
 leaped on shore from the tempest and the tyrant, and sprang 
 lightly up the mountains ; also the little chapel erected in the 
 year 1380 by the men of Uri to his memory and the memory of 
 his escape, thirty -one years after his death, while one hundred and 
 fourteen individuals were still living, who had known the hero 
 personally ; you pass the sacred field of Grutli, where the mid- 
 night oath was taken by the patriots. The scenery is in keep- 
 ing with the associations, the associations with the scenery. 
 Assuredly the Lake is one of the sublimest in the world ; it is 
 useless attempting to describe it, or the mountains that rise in 
 such amazing grandeur out of it, or the bays that in such ex- 
 quisite beauty allure you to explore its winding recesses. 
 
 One of the precipitous Alps whose foundations it conceals, 
 shows, high up in the air, a white sear where a fragment of rock 
 1200 feet wide broke from the mountain and fell into the Lake 
 in the year 1801, raising such a wave in its fall, that at the dis- 
 tance of a mile a hamlet was overwhelmed and five houses de- 
 stroyed by it, with the loss of a number of lives. The size of 
 this fragment, though the scar in the mountain looks so incon- 
 siderable, may serve to direct the traveller's measurement of 
 those huge avalanches, which at the distance of leagues look so 
 enormous on the Jungfrau, and which on other mountains have 
 buried whole villages and swept whole forests in their way. 
 
CHAP, xxx.] REGION OF LUCERNE. 129 
 
 Lucerne is a picturesque and lovely village situated like Ge- 
 neva at the effluence of a sea-green river from an azure lake, 
 and having many of the constituents of beauty and romance that 
 make Geneva such an earthly paradise, and some elements of 
 originality that Geneva does not possess. There is no Mont 
 Blanc, hanging its piles of snow in the heavens on one side, nor 
 any Jura range, skirting the golden sunset sky and shadowy 
 earth with its green fringe on the other ; but there are grand and 
 varied mountains, gazing into the crystal depths ; there is an 
 arrowy river, dividing the town, having journeyed all the way 
 through heroic lands down the valley of the St. Gothard from a 
 little tarn among the mountain summits ; there are picturesque 
 old feudal walls and watch-towers ; there are long bridges, which 
 are covered galleries of antique paintings ; and there are many 
 points of interest and of beautiful scenery, with wild wood-walks, 
 and sudden openings, and rich panoramas, where morning wakes 
 the world to music and beauty, and where at evening the western 
 clouds, mountains, groves, orchards, and all the shadow-dappled 
 foliage, burn richly in " the slant beams of the sinking sun." 
 
 " My friends emerge 
 
 Beneath the wide, wide heaven, and view again 
 The many-steepled tract magnificent 
 Of hilly fields and meadows, and the lake 
 With some fair bark perhaps, whose sails light up 
 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
 Of purple shadow." 
 
 Here a man, whose misfortune it may have been to be born in 
 the heartless heart of some great city, might, if it were not for 
 the demon of intolerance, find a spot for his family, to grow up 
 quietly under all the influences of nature. And if he have a 
 dear child like the Poet's, here he may muse, whether amidst 
 the Frost at Midnight, or the summer stars, and watching the 
 slumbers of his cradled infant, may say, 
 
 " Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 
 Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
 Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
 And momentary pauses of the thought, 
 My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
 PART II. 10 
 
130 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxx. 
 
 With tender gladness, thus to look at thee 
 And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
 And in far other scenes ! For I was reared 
 In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, 
 And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze, 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear 
 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
 Of that eternal language, which thy God 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 Himself in all, and all things in himself. 
 Great Universal Teacher ! He shall mould 
 Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 
 
 " Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 
 Whether the Summer clothe the general earth 
 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 
 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
 Smokes in the sun- thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall, 
 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
 Or if the secret ministry of Frost 
 Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 
 Quietly shining to the shining moon." 
 
 I say, were it not for the demon of intolerance, the binding of 
 the conscience in the fetters of Church and State. This is the 
 pest that still afflicts Switzerland, worse by far than the scourge of 
 Cretinism and the goitre, and accompanied, in this region of 
 Lucerne, with an unaccountable passion for the Jesuits, whose 
 teachings in morality and political science are so at war with the 
 immemorial freedom of Tell's mountains. Lucerne is one of 
 the three towns, with Berne and Zurich, where the confederative 
 Diet holds its sessions. It is styled " Town and Republic," hav- 
 ing a Council of One Hundred for its government, divided into a 
 daily Council of thirty-six, and the larger Council of sixty-four, 
 the whole Hundred meeting every three years, or, if the daily 
 Council require it, oftener. At the head of the Council is a 
 Chief Magistrate, called the Avoyer. The number of inhabit- 
 ants in the town is about 8000 Romanists, and two hundred 
 
CHAP, xxx.] LIONS AT LUCERNE. 131 
 
 Protestants, the Protestants being excluded from all participation 
 in the rights of citizens, and only admitted on sufferance. How 
 different from the manner in' which we receive Romanists in our 
 own country ! When will the example of equal citizenship 
 among all religionists be followed abroad, by Romanists towards 
 Protestants ? 
 
 There is an arsenal in Lucerne well worth visiting for its his- 
 torical trophies. Here you may see the very shirt of mail in 
 wfrich Duke Leopold of Austria was struck down at the great 
 battle of Sempach. There is also the monument of Thorwald- 
 sen to the memory of the Swiss guards, one of the finest things 
 of the kind in the world, one of the few monuments of simple 
 grandeur and pathos speaking at once to the heart, and needing 
 neither artist nor critic to tell you it is beautiful. There are the 
 curious old bridges, like children's picture-books, amusing you 
 much in the same manner, where indeed you can scarcely get 
 across the bridge, you are so taken with examining the rude old 
 sketches. There are all the scenes of the Old Testament hang- 
 ing above you, as you pass one way, and all the scenes of the 
 New as you pass the other. This Scriptural bridge was 1380 fee" 
 in length, and when you are tired with looking at the pictures, 
 you may rest your eyes by leaning on the parapet, and gazing 
 over the lovely Lake, with the sail-boats flitting across it, and 
 the distant mountains towering above it. In the roof of another 
 bridge are represented the heroic passages of native Swiss his- 
 tory, and in yet another the whole curious array of Holbein's 
 Dance of Death. 
 
 Wordsworth says truly that "these pictures are not to be spoken 
 of as works of Art, but they are instruments admirably answer- 
 ing the purpose for which they were designed." And indeed 
 when they were first painted, and for a long time after, how deep 
 must have been the impression made by them on the people's 
 mind, especially the hearts of the children. Fathers and mothers 
 with their little ones in hand, from far and near, wandered up 
 and down in these picture-books of the history of Christ and of 
 the country, telling their stories and their lessons. It was a sin- 
 gular conception, and a very happy one, " turning common dust 
 to gold," and inviting every passenger of the bridge to get more 
 
132 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxx 
 
 than the value of his toll (if there ever was any) by thinking on 
 his pilgrimage. Wordsworth says that the sacred pictures are 
 240 in number. His lines are beautiful, produced by the re- 
 membrance of them. 
 
 " One after one, its Tablets that unfold 
 The whole design of Scripture history ; 
 From the first tasting of the fatal Tree, 
 Till the bright star appeared in eastern skies, 
 Announcing One was born mankind to free ; 
 His acts, his wrongs, his final sacrifice ; 
 Lessons for every heart, a Bible for all eyes. 
 
 " Long may these homely works devised of old, 
 These simple efforts of Helvetian skill, 
 Aid, with congenial influence, to uphold 
 The State, the Country's destiny to mould ; 
 Turning, for them who pass, the common dust 
 Of servile opportunity to gold ; 
 Filling the soul with sentiments august, 
 The beautiful, the brave, the holy, and the just !" 
 
 Mount Pilatus is the Storm King of the Lake, always brewing 
 mischief; and a good reason for it, according to the strange old 
 legend that he who washed his hands of Christ's blood before all 
 the people, and yet delivered him up to the people, drowned him- 
 self in a black lake on the top of the mountain. How he came 
 to be there is accounted for by his being banished into Gaul by 
 Tiberius, and into the mountains by Conscience. There still his 
 vexed spirit wanders, and invites the tempest. If ever in the 
 morning sunshine you get upon the forehead of the mountain, 
 you are sure to have bad weather afterwards, but if in the even- 
 ing it is clear, this is a good prophecy. Translating the common 
 proverb of the people concerning it in the reverse order, 
 
 " When Pilatus doffs his hat, 
 Then the weather will be wet." 
 
 But when he keeps his slouched cloud-beaver over his brows all 
 day, you may expect fair weather for your excursions, the storm- 
 spirit not being abroad, but brooding. 
 
CHAP, xxxi.] ASCENT OF THE RIGHI. 133 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Ascent of the Righi. Extraordinary glory of the view. 
 
 IF you are favored with a fine clear sunrise, then, of all excur- 
 sions from Lucerne, that to the summit of the Righi is unrivalled 
 in the world for its beauty. It is comparatively rare that travel- 
 lers are so favored, and the Guide-books warn you not to be dis- 
 appointed, by quoting, as the more common fate, the sad Orphic 
 ululation of some stricken poet, who came down ignorant of sun- 
 rise, but well acquainted with the rain. 
 
 " Seven weary up-hill leagues we sped, 
 
 The setting sun to see ; 
 Sullen and grim he went to bed, 
 
 Sullen and grim went we. 
 Nine sleepless hours of night we passed 
 
 The rising sun to see ; 
 Sullen and grim he rose again, 
 
 Sullen and grim rose we." 
 
 After hesitating some days, because of unpromising responses 
 from the cloud-sybils, we at length resolved to try it, for the 
 ascent is worth making, at all events. We chose the way across 
 the Lake by the village of Weggis, which place we reached by 
 a lovely sail in a small boat with two rowers, a thousand fold 
 pleasanter way, and more in keeping with the wild sequestered 
 scenery, than a noisy crowded steamer. There are several other 
 routes, as you may learn by the Guide-books, but I shall mention 
 only ours. Landing at Weggis, you immediately commence the 
 ascent of the mountain, fatiguing to the uttermost on a warm 
 afternoon, but filled with views all the way up, of Lake and 
 snowy mount, and wild-wood scenery, beautiful enough to pay 
 you abundantly, even if you saw nothing at the summit but the 
 ground you tread upon. We made our ascent in the afternoon, 
 so as to be upon the mountain by night, all ready for the morn- 
 
134 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxi. 
 
 ing's glorious spectacle ; but it would have been far more com- 
 fortable to have come up one morning, and stayed till the next. 
 
 The sunset was one of extraordinary splendor, as regards the 
 clouds and their coloring in the golden West, and we enjoyed 
 also a very extensive view, but not the view. We had set out 
 from Lucerne with a burden of forebodings, almost every party 
 that had made the ascent for weeks having returned with a load 
 of disappointments ; and though the evening was now fine, the 
 next morning might be cloudy. It is an excursion for which 
 you must have clear weather, or, as to the particular scene of 
 glory for which you make it, which is the sunrise upon the vast 
 range of mountains visible from the Righi, it is nothing. An 
 ordinarily fine morning will not answer ; you must have a clear 
 sky the moment the sun rises into it. Though the whole hea- 
 vens beside be fair, yet if there happen to be a stripe or bank of 
 clouds lying along the eastern horizon, your sport is up, you lose 
 the great spectacle. The fog, which sometimes breeds in fine 
 weather, is still more destructive. You might as well be abed 
 under your blanket. So it may easily be conceived that of the 
 many thousands, who travel thither, very few obtain the object 
 of their journey. Nevertheless, in other respects, as I have 
 said, the mountain is well worth ascending. A clear sunset, 
 together with the prospects bursting on you in your way up, are 
 rewards to give a day for, and a hard journey. 
 
 The brow of the mountain is as perpendicular as Arthur's 
 Crag at Edinburgh, almost cresting over like the sea-surf, or a 
 wave in mid ocean. In the evening, walking along the edge of 
 the precipice, the vast scene is of a deep and solenm beauty, 
 though you are waiting for the dawn to reveal its several features. 
 The lights in so many villages far below, over so great an extent, 
 produce a wild and magic picturesqueness. There at our left 
 is Lucerne, here at our feet is Kussnacht, a few steps to the right 
 and Arth is below you, with many glancing lights in the sur- 
 rounding chalets. The evening church bells are ringing, and 
 the sound comes undulating upward, so deep, so musical ! There 
 is no moon, but the stars are out, and methinks they look much 
 brighter, more startling, more earnest, than they do from the 
 world below. How far we are above that world ! How pure 
 
CHAP, xxxi.] SUNSET ON THE RIGHT. 135 
 
 and still the air around us ! Is the soul as much elevated to- 
 wards the air of heaven ? Ah, if by climbing a mountain top 
 we could become spiritually minded, how easy would it be ! But 
 we have brought the self-same mind and disposition up the Righi, 
 that sailed with our bodies across the Lake, and there is the same 
 moral atmosphere here, as in the world below. There is no 
 place lower than heaven, that is above sin ; and here we are at 
 least a hundred people in all, and room enough for selfishness, 
 were it only in elbowing for room. 
 
 The summit where we are is called the Culm of the Righi, 
 because it is the culminating, or highest point, running up with 
 a turf covered slope, to the wave-like summit. A few steps 
 down the slope stands the little inn, with a second rough lodging 
 house below, though all accommodations are insufficient for the 
 crowd of sleepers waiting for the sun. Half an hour's walk 
 farther down, upon a lower summit, there is another inn, from 
 which those who spend the night there do generally issue too late 
 from their beds to arrive at the summit with the dawn, and so 
 lose the finest part of the vision. We slept little and unquietly, 
 and we rose while the stars were still bright, but beginning to 
 pale a little in the East with the breaking light of day ; and no 
 man who has not been in the same situation can tell the delight 
 with which we threw open the windows, and found a clear, fresh, 
 glorious morning. TMie sentinel of the dawn for the sleepers in 
 the inn seized his long wooden horn, and blew a blast in doors 
 and out to waken them, and then one after another emerged into 
 the open air, and hastened to the top of the mountain to watch 
 the movements of the sun. It was very cold, and the travellers 
 who had come away without cloaks, had committed a most un- 
 comfortable and nipping mistake, which they sometimes rectify 
 by wrapping themselves in the blankets under which they have 
 slept ; a practice which has suggested the invitation, in form of 
 a warning, to be found in every room, that those who carry off 
 the bed coverings shall pay a tax often batz each. So in a very 
 cold dawn, you may see the mountains covered with shivering 
 blanket spectres. 
 
 It was the sixth of September, and the most perfectly beautiful 
 morning that can be imagined. At a quarter past three the stars 
 
136 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xixi. 
 
 were reigning supreme in the heavens, with just enough of the 
 old moon left to make a trail of light in the shape of a little silver 
 boat among them. But speedily the horizon began to redden 
 over the eastern range of mountains, and then the dawn stole on 
 in such a succession of deepening tints, that nothing but the hues 
 of the preceding sunset could be more beautiful. But there is 
 this great difference between the sunrise and sunset, that the 
 hues of sunset are every moment deepening as you look .upon 
 them, until again they fade into the darkness, while those of the 
 sunrise gradually fade into the light of day. It is difficult to 
 say which process is most beautiful ; for if you could make 
 everything stand still around you, if you could stereotype or stay 
 the process for an hour, you could not tell whether it were the 
 morning dawn or the evening twilight. 
 
 A few long, thin stripes of fleecy cloud lay motionless above 
 the eastern horizon, like layers of silver lace, dipped first in 
 crimson, then in gold, then in pink, then lined with an ermine 
 of light, just as if the moon had been lengthened in soft furrows 
 along the sky. This scene in the East attracts every eye at 
 first, but it is not here that the glory of the view is to be looked 
 for. This glory is in that part of the horizon on which the sun 
 first falls, as he struggles up behind the mountains to flood the 
 world with light. And the reason why it is so glorious is be- 
 cause, long before you call it sunrise in the^East, he lights up in 
 the West a range of colossal pyres, that look like blazing cressets 
 kindled from the sky and fed with naptha. 
 
 The object most conspicuous as the dawn broke, and indeed 
 the most sublimely beautiful, was the vast enormous range of the 
 snowy mountains of the Oberland, without spot or veil of cloud 
 or mist to dim them, the Finsteraarhorn at the left and the Jung, 
 frau and Silberhorn at the right, peak after peak and rrflps after 
 mass, glittering with a cold wintry whiteness in the grey dawn. 
 Almost the exact half of the circumference of the horizon com- 
 manded before and behind in our view, was filled with these 
 peaks and masses of snow and ice, then lower down, the moun- 
 tains of bare rock, and lower still the earth with mounts of ver- 
 dure ; and this section of the horizontal circumference, which is 
 filled with the vast ranges of the Oberland Alps, being almost due 
 
CHAP, xxxi.] SUNRISE ON THE RIGHI. 137 
 
 West from the sun's first appearance, it is on their tops that the 
 rising rays first strike. 
 
 This was the scene for which we watched, and it seems as if 
 nothing in nature can ever again be so beautiful. It was as if 
 an angel had flown round the horizon of mountain ranges, and 
 lighted up each of their white pyramidal points in succession, 
 like a row of gigantic lamps burning with rosy fires. Just so 
 the sun suddenly tipped the highest points and lines of the snowy 
 outline, and then, descending lower on the body of the mountains, 
 it was as if an invisible Omnipotent hand had taken them, and 
 dipped the whole range in a glowing pink ; the line between the 
 white cold snow untouched by the sunlight, and the warm roseate 
 hue above, remaining perfectly distinct. This effect continued 
 some minutes, becoming, up to a certain point, more and more 
 beautiful. 
 
 We were like children in a dark room, watching for the light- 
 ing up of some great transparency. Or, to use that image with 
 which the Poet Dante endeavored to describe the expectant gaze 
 of Beatrice in Paradise, awaiting the splendors to be revealed, 
 we might say, connecting some passages, and adapting the 
 imagery, 
 
 '* E'en as the bird, who midst the leafy bower 
 Has in her nest sat darkling through the night, 
 With her sweet brood ; impatient to descry 
 Their wished looks, and to brina^ home their food 
 In the fond quest unconscious of her toil : 
 She of the time prevenient, on the spray, 
 That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze 
 Expects the sun ; nor ever till the dawn 
 Removeth from the east her eager ken. 
 Wistfully thus we looked to see the heavens 
 Wax more and more resplendent, till on earth 
 Her mountain peaks burned as with rosy flame. 
 
 'Twixt gladness and amaze 
 In sooth no will had we to utter aught, 
 Or hear. And as a pilgrim, when he rests 
 Within the temple of his vow, looks round, 
 In breathless awe, and hopes some time to tell 
 Of all its goodly state ; even so our eyes 
 Coursed up and down along the living light, 
 Now low, and now aloft, and now around 
 
138 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxi. 
 
 Visiting every step. Each mount did seem 
 Colossal ruby, whereon so inwrought 
 The sunbeam glowed, yet soft, it flamed intense 
 In ecstasy of glory." 
 
 In truth no word was uttered when that scene became visible. 
 Each person gazed in silence, or spake as in a whisper. It was 
 as if we witnessed some supernatural revelation, where mighty 
 spirits were the actors between earth and heaven ; 
 
 " With such ravishing light 
 And mantling crimson, in transparent air, 
 The splendors shot before us." 
 
 And yet a devout soul might have almost felt, seeing those fires 
 kindled as on the altars of God made visible, as if it heard the 
 voices of Seraphim crying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of 
 Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory ! For indeed, the 
 vision was so radiant, so full of sudden, vast, and unimaginable 
 beauty and splendor, that methinks a phalanx of the Sons of 
 God, who might have been passing at that moment, could not 
 have helped stopping and shouting for joy as on the morning of 
 creation. 
 
 This was the transient view, which to behold, one might well 
 undertake a voyage across the Atlantic ; of a glory and a 
 beauty indescribable, and no where else in the world to be en- 
 joyed, and here only in perfect weather. After these few mo- 
 ments, when the sun rose so high, that the whole masses of snow 
 upon the mountain ranges were lighted with the same rosy light, 
 it grew rapidly fainter, till you could no longer distinguish the 
 deep exquisite pink and rosy hues by means of their previous 
 contrast with the cold white. Next the sun's rays fell upon the 
 bare rocky peaks, where there was neither snow nor vegetation, 
 making them shine like jasper, and next on the forests and soft 
 grassy slopes, and so down into the deep bosom of the vales. 
 The pyramidal shadow cast by the Righi mountain was most 
 distinct and beautiful, but the atmospheric phenomenon of the 
 Spectre of the Righi was not visible. 
 
 This amazing panorama is said to extend over a circumfer- 
 ence of 300 miles. In all this region, when the upper glory of 
 
CHAP, xxxi.] SUNRISE ON THE RIGHT. 139 
 
 the heavens and mountain peaks has ceased playing, then, as 
 the sun gets higher, forests, lakes, hills, rivers, trees, and villages, 
 at first indistinct and grey in shadows, become flooded with 
 sunshine, and almost seem floating up towards you. There was 
 for us another feature of the view, constituting by itself one of 
 the most novel and charming sights of Swiss scenery, but which 
 does not always accompany the panorama from the Righi, even 
 in a fine morning. On Earth, the morning may be too fine. 
 This was the soft, smooth white body of mist, lying on most of 
 the lakes and on the vales, a sea of mist, floating, or rather brood- 
 ing, like a white dove, over the landscape. The spots of land 
 at first visible in the midst of it were just like islands half emerg- 
 ing to the view. It lay over the bay of Kussnacht at our feet, 
 like the white robe of an infant in the cradle, but the greater 
 part of the Lake of Lucerne was sleeping quietly without it, as 
 an undressed babe. Over the whole of the Lake of Zug the 
 mist was at first motionless, but in the breath of the morning it 
 began slowly to move altogether towards the West, disclosing the 
 village of Arth and the verdurous borders of the Lake, and then 
 uncovering its deep sea-green waters, which reflected the lovely 
 sailing shadows of the clouds as a mirror. 
 
 Now the church bells began to chime under this body of mist, 
 and voices from the invisible villages, mingled with the tinkle of 
 sheep-bells, and the various stir of life awakening from sleep, 
 came stilly up the mountain. And now some of the mountain 
 peaks themselves began suddenly to be touched with fleeces of 
 cloud, as if smoking with incense in morning worship. Detach- 
 ments of mist begin also to rise from the lakes and valleys, 
 moving from the main body up into the air. The villages, cha- 
 lets, and white roads, dotting and threading the vast circumfer- 
 ence of landscape, come next into view. And now on the Lake 
 of Zug you may see reflected the shadows of clouds that have 
 risen from the surface, but are themselves below us. 
 
 It is said you can see fourteen lakes from the place where we 
 are standing. I counted at least twelve last evening, before the 
 night-veil of the mist had been drawn above them, but this morn- 
 ing the goings on in the heavens have been too beautiful and 
 grand to take the time for counting them, and besides they are 
 
140 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxi. 
 
 too much enveloped with the slow-retiring fogs to detect them. 
 On the side of the Righi under the eastern horizon you behold 
 the little Lake of Lowertz, with the ruins of the village of Gol- 
 dau, destroyed hy the slide of the Rossberg, and you trace dis- 
 tinctly the path of the destroying avalanche, the vast groove of 
 bare rock, where the mountain separated and thundered down 
 the vale. A little beyond are the beautiful peaks of Schwytz 
 called the Mitres. 
 
 All this wondrous panorama is before us. Whatever side we 
 turn, new points of beauty are disclosed. As the day advances, 
 every image, fully defined, draws to its perfect place in the pic- 
 ture. A cloudless noon, with its still solemnity, would make 
 visible, for a short time, every height and depth, every lake, 
 mountain, town, streamlet, and village, that the eye could reach 
 from this position, and then would pass again the lovely suc- 
 cessive transitions of shade deepening into shade, and colors rich- 
 lier burning, into the blaze of sun-set, and the soft melancholy 
 twilight, till nothing could be seen from our high position but the 
 stars in heaven. In a few hours we have witnessed, as on a 
 central observatory, what the Poet Young calls 
 
 -" the astonishing magnificence 
 
 Of unintelligent creation," 
 
 from the numerous worlds that throng the firmament at midnight, 
 
 " where depth, height, breadth 
 Are lost in their extremes, and where to count 
 The thick sown glories in this field of fire 
 Perhaps a seraph's computation fails," 
 
 to the beauty and sublimity of our own small world, revealed 
 when theirs is hidden, in the break of dawn, and revealed with 
 such an array of morning splendor, that not even Night and 
 the Universe of stars can be for the moment a more entrancing 
 spectacle ! 
 
 And for whom hath God arranged all this ? Not for the 
 Angels alone, but for every eye that looks to him in love, for the 
 humblest mind and heart, that can look abroad and say, My 
 
CHAP, xxxi.] SUNRISE ON THE RIGHT. 141 
 
 Father made them all ! He made them, that his children might 
 love him in them, and know him by them. 
 
 " The soul of man, His Face designed to see, 
 Who gave these wonders to be seen by man, 
 Has here a previous scene of objects great 
 On which to dwell ; to stretch to that expanse 
 Of thought, to rise to that exalted height 
 Of admiration, to contract that awe, 
 And give her whole capacities that strength, 
 Which best may qualify for final joy. 
 The more our spirits are enlarged on earth 
 The deeper draught they shall receive of heaven. 
 
 Thou, who didst touch the lips of Jesse's son, 
 Rapt in sweet contemplation of those fires, 
 And set his harp in concert with the spheres, 
 Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding 
 Creation's golden steps, to climb to Thee !" 
 
 YOUNG. 
 
 Before such a scene how ought the heart to expand with the 
 love of God, and the adoration of his glory ! Waken, O my 
 soul, to morning worship with the whole creation around thee, 
 and breathe forth, with all the works of God, the breath of grati- 
 tude and praise. What a scene is this ! How beautiful, how 
 beautiful ! And if our hearts were in perfect unison with it, if 
 there were within us a spiritual scenery, the work of divine 
 grace, as fitting as this material, the creation of divine power, 
 heaven with its purity and blessedness would not be far off from 
 every one of us. And why should the light of the rising sun 
 kindle earth and heaven into a smile so transcendently beautiful, 
 and our souls not be enkindled in like manner in their horizon 
 of spiritual glory ? We need Divine Grace to take away our 
 blindness. This rosy flame, into which the cold snowy moun- 
 tain tops seemed suddenly changed by the sun upon them, was a 
 symbol of what takes place with the truths of the Word of God, 
 when the Spirit breathes upon them, and brings them to the soul. 
 Then how they shine, with what lovely warmth of coloring, with 
 what intense exciting brightness, with what interpenetrating 
 glory, by which the soul itself is transfigured and raised to 
 heaven ! So must God shine into our hearts to give us the light 
 
143 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. 
 
 of the knowledge of his glory, as it shines in the face of Jesus 
 Christ. When this is done, then all things are filled with mean- 
 ing and love. 
 
 And this whole scene of Night giving place to Morning, pour- 
 ing like a flood over the wide earth, viewed from a height so 
 commanding, may bring forcibly to mind the glory of the rising 
 of the Sun of Righteousness upon the nations, the light and holi- 
 ness of the gospel poured over the world and transfiguring its 
 tribes and institutions with blessedness. From their post of ob- 
 servation in heaven, methinks Celestial Intelligences enjoy some- 
 thing such a view, as they see Christ's kingdom advancing, the 
 troops of Darkness fleeing, the mists of Error rolling from the 
 earth, the shrines of idolatry falling, the true temples of God 
 everywhere rising, nation after nation coming to the light, the 
 world awakening to God's praise resounding. From every clime 
 they come, in every zone they kneel, from continents and islands, 
 in sun-burned Ethiopia and ice-clad Greenland, Eastern Java 
 and the natives of the farthest West, unfettered Africa and China 
 from the thraldom of her gods. 
 
 " One Lord, one Father ! Error has no place ; 
 That creeping pestilence is driven away ; 
 The breath of heaven has chased it. In the heart 
 No passion touches a discordant string. 
 One song employs all nations, and all cry 
 Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us ! 
 The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 
 Shout to each other, and the mountain tops 
 From distant mountains catch the flying joy, 
 Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
 Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round !" 
 
CHAP, xxxii.] THE ROSSBERG AVALANCHE. 143 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 
 
 Lucerne to Einsiedeln. Dr. Zay's history of the Rossberg Avalanche 
 
 WE left Lucerne at five o'clock in the morning, that is, myself 
 and an English clergyman, whom I had promised at Geneva to 
 meet at Lucerne and travel with him into Italy, down the pass of 
 the Splugen. We were dropped by the steamer at the village of 
 Brunnen in the Canton of Schwytz, near the little republic of 
 Gersau, the whole of which occupied one village, and a princi- 
 pality of a few acres. The old town of Schwytz, from which 
 the country of Switzerland takes its name, a town of old heroic 
 remembrances and valorous men, is most romantically situated at 
 the foot of those curious hierarchical mountains called the Mitres. 
 We entered the old church, looked into the town-house with its 
 interesting antique portraits, of real ancestral nobility, passed the 
 Mitres, and the Goldau lake, and the Rossberg avalanche, and 
 wound our way towards the curacy of Zwingle and the Abbey 
 of Einsiedeln. There is much food for reflection, all the way, 
 as well as much natural beauty for enjoyment. A few mornings 
 ago we were overlooking all this scene from the summit of the 
 Righi, how beautiful ! But is there one spot in all this world of 
 ours, where the thought of beauty is not linked sooner or later 
 with that of pain and death ? 
 
 No man can pass this Rossberg mountain without thinking of 
 the dread catastrophe that here only a few years ago overwhelmed 
 in so vast a burial three or four whole lovely villages at once ; 
 one of the most terrible natural convulsions in all the history of 
 Switzerland. Four hundred and fifty-seven persons are said to 
 have perished beneath this mighty avalanche. The place out of 
 which it broke in the mountain is a thousand feet in breadth by 
 a hundred feet deep, and this falling mass extended bodily at 
 least three miles in length. It shot across the valley with the 
 
144 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxn. 
 
 swiftness of a cannon-ball, so that in five minutes the villages 
 were all crushed as if they had been egg-shells, or the mimic 
 toys of children. And when the people looked towards the luxu- 
 riant vale, where the towns had lain smiling and secure, the whole 
 region was a mass of smoking ruins. It makes one think of the 
 sight that met the eyes of Abraham, when " he got up early in 
 the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord," and all 
 the country, where the cities of the plain had been, was as the 
 smoke and scurf of a furnace. 
 
 But this history ought not to be related in any other language 
 than the simple and powerful narrative of Dr. Zay, of the neigh- 
 boring village of Arth, an eye-witness of the tremendous specta- 
 cle. I shall give his words, even though they may be familiar to 
 my readers ; a paraphrase would not be half so interesting. 
 
 " The summer of 1806," says he, " had been very rainy, and 
 on the first and second of September it rained incessantly. New 
 crevices were observed in the flank of the mountain, a sort of 
 cracking noise was heard internally, stones started out of the 
 ground, detached fragments of rocks rolled down the mountain ; 
 at two o'clock in the afternoon of the second of September, a 
 large rock became loose, and in falling raised a cloud of black 
 dust. Toward the lower part of the mountain, the ground seemed 
 pressed down from above ; and when a stick or a spade was 
 driven in, it moved of itself. A man, who had been digging in 
 his garden, ran away from fri'ght at these extraordinary appear- 
 ances ; soon a fissure, larger than all the others, was observed ; 
 insensibly it increased ; springs of water ceased all at once to 
 flow ; the pine-trees of the forest absolutely reeled ; birds flew 
 away screaming. A few minutes before five o'clock, the symp. 
 toms of some mighty catastrophe became still stronger ; the whole 
 surface of the mountain seemed to glide down, but so slowly as 
 to afford time to the inhabitants to go away. An old man, who 
 had often predicted some such disaster, was quietly smoking his 
 pipe, when told by a young man, running by, that the mountain 
 was, in the act of falling ; he rose and looked out, but came into 
 his house again, saying he had time to fill another pipe. The 
 young man, continuing to fly, was thrown down several times, 
 
CHAP. XXXIL] STORY OF THE AVALANCHE. 145 
 
 and escaped with difficulty ; looking back, he saw the house car- 
 ried off all at once. 
 
 " Another inhabitant, being alarmed, took two of his children 
 and ran away with them, calling to his wife to follow with the 
 third ; but she went in for another, who still remained (Marianna, 
 aged five) : just then, Francisca Ulrich, their servant, was cross- 
 ing the room, with this Marianna, whom she held by the hand, 
 and saw her mistress ; at that instant, as Francisca afterwards 
 said, i The house appeared to be torn from its foundation (it was 
 of wood), and spun round and round like a tetotum I was some- 
 times on my head, sometimes on my feet, in total darkness, and 
 violently separated from the child.' When the motion stopped, 
 she found herself jammed in on all sides, with her head down- 
 wards, much bruised, and in extreme pain. She supposed she 
 was buried alive at a great depth ; with much difficulty she dis- 
 engaged her right hand, and wiped the blood from her eyes. 
 Presently she heard the faint moans of Marianna, and called to 
 her by her name ; the child answered that she was on her back 
 among stones and bushes, which held her fast, but that her hands 
 were free, and that she saw the light, and even something green. 
 She asked whether people would not soon come to take them out. 
 Francisca answered that it was the day of judgment, and that no 
 one was left to help them, but that they would be released by 
 death, and be happy in heaven. They prayed together. At last 
 Francisca's ear was struck by the sound of a bell, which she 
 knew to be that of Steinenberg : then seven o'clock struck in 
 another village, and she began to hope there were still living be- 
 ings, and endeavored to comfort the child. The poor little girl 
 was at first clamorous for her supper, but her cries soon became 
 fainter, and at last quite died away. Francisca, still with her 
 head downwards, and surrounded with damp earth, experienced 
 a sense of cold in her feet almost insupportable. After prodigious 
 efforts, sho succeeded in disengaging her legs, and thinks this 
 saved her life. Many hours had passed in this situation, when 
 she again heard the voice of Marianna, who had been asleep, and 
 now renewed her lamentations. In the meantime, the unfortu- 
 nate father, who, with much difficulty, had saved himself and two 
 qhildren, wandered about till daylight, when he came among the 
 
 PART II. 11 
 
146 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxn. 
 
 ruins to look for the rest of his family. He soon discovered his 
 wife, by a foot which appeared above ground : she was dead, with 
 a child in her arms. His cries, and the noise he made in dig- 
 ging, were heard by Marian na, who called out. She was extri- 
 cated with a broken thigh, and, saying that Francisca was not far 
 off, a farther search led to her release also, but in such a state 
 that her life was despaired of: she was blind for some days, and 
 remained subject to convulsive fits of terror. It appeared that 
 the house, or themselves at least, had been carried down about 
 one thousand five hundred feet from where it stood before. 
 
 " In another place, a child two years old was found unhurt, 
 lying on its straw mattress upon the mud, without any vestige of 
 the house from which he had been separated. Such a mass of 
 earth and stones rushed at once into the Lake of Lowertz, although 
 five miles distant, that one end of it was filled up, and a prodigious 
 wave passing completely over the island of Schwanau, seventy 
 feet above the usual level of the water, overwhelmed the opposite 
 shore, and, as it returned, swept away into the lake many houses 
 with their inhabitants. The village of Seewen, situated at the 
 farther end, was inundated, and some houses washed away, and 
 the flood carried live fish into the village of Steinen. The cha- 
 pel of Olten, built of wood, was found half a league from the 
 place it had previously occupied, and many large blocks of stone 
 completely changed their position. 
 
 " The most considerable of the villages overwhelmed in the 
 vale of Arth was Goldau, and its name is now affixed to the 
 whole melancholy story and place. I shall relate only one more 
 incident : A party of eleven travellers from Berne, belonging to 
 the most distinguished families there, arrived at Arth on the 
 second of September, and set off on foot for the Righi a few 
 minutes before the catastrophe. Seven of them had got about 
 two hundred yards a-head, the other four saw them entering the 
 village of Goldau, and one of the latter, Mr. R. Jenner, pointing 
 out to the rest the summit of the Rossberg (full four miles off in 
 a straight line), where some strange commotion seemed taking 
 place, which they themselves (the four behind) were observing 
 with a telescope, and had entered into conversation on the subject 
 with some strangers just come up ; when, all at once, a flight of 
 
CHAP, xxxn.] VILLAGE OF GOLDAU. 147 
 
 stones, like cannon-balls, traversed the air above their heads ; a 
 cloud of thick dust obscured the valley ; a frightful noise was 
 heard. They fled ! As soon as the obscurity was so far dis- 
 sipated as to make objects discernible, they sought their friends, 
 but the village of Goldau had disappeared under a heap of stones 
 and rubbish one hundred feet in height, and the whole valley pre- 
 sented nothing but a perfect chaos ! Of the unfortunate survivors, 
 one lost a wife to whom he was just married, one a son, a third 
 the two pupils under his care : all researches to discover their 
 remains were, and have ever since been, fruitless. Nothing is 
 left of Goldau but the bell which hung in its steeple, and which 
 was found about a mile off. With the rocks torrents of mud 
 came down, acting as rollers ; but they took a different direction 
 when in the valley, the mud following the slope of the ground 
 towards the lake of Lowertz, while the rocks, preserving a 
 straight course, glanced across the valley towards the Righi. 
 The rocks above, moving much faster than those near the ground, 
 went farther, and ascended even a great way up the Righi : its 
 base is covered with large blocks carried to an incredible height, 
 and by which trees were mowed down^ as they might have been 
 by cannon." 
 
 The people of Goldau are said to have possessed such interest- 
 ing qualities of person and manners, such purity and simplicity 
 of domestic life, as well corresponded with the loveliness of their 
 native village and its surrounding scenery. How strange and 
 awful seems under such circumstances the transition from Time 
 into Eternity ! No thought was there of death, no effort of pre- 
 paration, no moment of prayer, but a swift, dread crash, a wild 
 surprise, and those overtaken souls were in the world of spirits ! 
 What a lesson for the living ! Yet its power is all taken away, 
 in all probability, with the race remaining, and with the crowd of 
 visitors annually passing, its power as a lesson of sudden death, 
 by the mere fact that death under the same circumstances is not 
 likely to be the lot of those now living. No, answers the lesson, 
 not perhaps under the same circumstances ; but the solemnity of 
 the event is not in its circumstances, and your own death may be 
 as sudden, though you may not be buried under a mountain. It 
 is sudden death, not the being crushed by an avalanche, that is 
 
148 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxii. 
 
 so awful. Wherefore, as you stand upon this great grave, and 
 moralize over it, remembering perhaps the prayer, From sudden 
 death, O God, deliver us ! pray also that you may be prepared 
 for sudden death, for it may come to you at your own fireside. 
 Endeavor, by Christ's grace, so to live, that death cannot be sud- 
 den to you, whenever or however he may come. 
 
 Those are most striking and appropriate lines of an old poet, 
 telling us that though God has promised grace for repentance, he 
 has not promised time, but always says NOW. Good stanzas they 
 are for our pilgrimage, whether we be at home or abroad, a pre- 
 cious word of wisdom. 
 
 " Early set forth on thine eternal race ; 
 The ascent is steep and craggy ; thou must climb 
 God at all times has promised sinners GRACE 
 If they repent; but He ne'er promised TIME. 
 
 Cheat not thyself, as most, who then prepare 
 For Death, when life is almost turned to fume : 
 One thief was saved, that no man need despair, 
 And but one thief, that no one might presume." 
 
CHAP, xxxiii.] BATTLE OF MORGARTEN. 149 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Morgarten, Sempach, and Arnold of Winkelried. 
 
 ON our way from Schwytz to Einsiedeln, a short romantic 
 walk from the main road, lies the battle-field of Morgarten, on 
 the borders of the little Lake of Egeri, a spot next after Sempach 
 famous in the heroic ages of Swiss history. We have passed the 
 scene of a great convulsion of nature, a mountain tumbling from 
 its base, and " rocking its Alpine brethren;" but what was this, 
 or a hundred such avalanches, to the war of human passion ? Is 
 it not strange that we stand over the ruins of a volcano, on the 
 grave of buried cities, or where a mountain has fallen on a ham- 
 let, and think so much of the loss of life, and the sorrow and 
 pain and dread of sudden death, and the universal mourning of 
 survivors, but can visit a battle-field, where death revelled with 
 infinitely more of horror and fury, and think of nothing but glory ! 
 This avalanche of men at Morgarten was the death of thousands, 
 whirled in a storm of passion out of life, with desolating anguish 
 and ruin to thousands more ; but men gaze at the scene of the 
 conflict, and think only of the heroism of the living avalanche. 
 
 True, it was a battle against tyranny, and William Tell and 
 Walter Furst are said to have been there ; so, no wonder that 
 the Swiss fought so terribly ; but still it was war, savage, fierce, 
 remorseless war. And war for ages was almost the habitual 
 school of the Swiss Cantons. This great victory may well be 
 called the Marathon of Swiss history, the conquest of twenty 
 thousand Austrians by a band of only thirteen hundred men of 
 the mountains, a rushing, crashing ruin like a whirlwind. It 
 took place in the year 1315. A little commemorative chapel 
 stands above the lake, overhung by a rocky hill, from which the 
 scene is all before you ; but it is very difficult to conceive the 
 position of the armies. The thirteen hundred hung like a small 
 thunder-cloud on the heights above the lake, and the twenty thou- 
 
150 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxm. 
 
 sand were mailed and crowded along the narrow strand below. 
 The men of Schwytz were the leaders of the patriots, joined 
 with four hundred from Uri, and three hundred from Unterwald- 
 en, and after this day, the name of Swiss designated the confede- 
 racy and the country SCHWYTZER-LAND. 
 
 Seventy-one years afterwards, not far from the same region, on 
 the borders of the Lake of Sempach, against the same Austrian 
 enemies, one man, Arnold of Winkelried, gained a like victory 
 in 1386, by his own self-devotion, at the head of about fourteen 
 hundred men. The poet Wordsworth has finely connected his 
 memory with Tell's, at the shrine of patriotism and religion. 
 
 " Thither, in time of adverse shocks, 
 Of fainting hopes and backward wills, 
 Did mighty Tell repair of old, 
 A Hero cast in Nature's mould, 
 Deliverer of the steadfast rocks, 
 And of the ancient hills ! 
 
 He too, of battle martyrs chief ! 
 Who, to recall his daunted peers, 
 For victory shaped an open space, 
 By gathering with a wide embrace, 
 Into his single heart, a sheaf 
 Of fatal Austrian spears !" 
 
 It was indeed an amazing act of self-sacrificing courage, that 
 has no parallel whatever in the history of battles. We will let 
 Zschokke tell the story in prose, and then proceed upon our in- 
 terrupted pilgrimage. " It was the season of harvest, when the 
 sun darted his beams with great ardor. After a short prostration 
 in prayer, the Swiss arose ; their numbers were four hundred 
 men from Lucerne, nine hundred from the Waldstetten, and about 
 a hundred from Glaris and other places. Uniting now their 
 forces, they precipitated themselves with great impetuosity upon 
 the impregnable Austrian phalanx : but not a man yielded to the 
 shock. The Swiss fell one after another ; numbers lay bleeding 
 on the ground ; their whole force began to waver, when suddenly 
 a voice like thunder exclaimed : * I will open a passage to free- 
 dom ; faithful and beloved confederates, protect only my wife and 
 children !' These words of Arnold Struthan of Winkelried, a 
 
CHAP, xxxm.] ARNOLD OF WINKELRIED. 151 
 
 knight of Unterwalden, were no sooner uttered, than he seized 
 with loth arms as many of the enemy's spears as he was able, bu- 
 ried them in his body, and sank to the ground, while the confede- 
 rates rushed forward through the breach over his corpse." 
 Nothing now could withstand the torrent ; helmets, arms, all, 
 were demolished by the blows of their clubs. Hundreds of 
 mailed warriors and nobles went down, and Duke Leopold of 
 Austria fell lifeless. Thousands perished in retreat, and the little 
 band remained victorious and free, to bless the devotion of Arnold 
 of Winkelried, and to cherish the legacy of his patriotism, and 
 the fireside of his wife and children. Nothing like this is to be 
 found either in ancient or modern history, and rightly pondered, 
 what a lesson of self-sacrifice it reads to the patriot and the Chris- 
 tian ! 
 
152 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxiv, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Pilgrimage of Einsiedeln and worship of the Virgin. 
 
 EINSIEDELN constitutes the very head-quarters of the worship of 
 the Virgin Mary. All day long, if you come into the region as 
 we did, nigh about the season for the great annual worshipping 
 festival, or virginal levee, you will meet pilgrims on the roads in 
 every direction, hurrying thither or returning from the shrine ; 
 old men and robust peasants, maidens and little children, troops 
 of old women telling their beads and repeating their prayers, as 
 they trarnp along the wet road, as if praying for a wager. What 
 an intense, haggard zeal is depicted in some of their counte- 
 nances ; their lips move, and they do not look at you, but hurry 
 on undistracted from their great work, for they probably have a 
 certain number of Aves to repeat, or perhaps a bead roll of 
 prayers so constructed, that if they miss one, they must go over 
 the whole again from the beginning. 
 
 And is this religion ? Is it taught for religion by beings who 
 have heard of Jesus Christ, and of the Sacred Scriptures, and of 
 the character of God ? Is this the influence of the Virgin Mary 
 upon the soul ? Do men expect thus to climb to heaven ? Pass 
 on to the great building, the spacious Temple of the Virgin, and 
 you will see. It is a vast and gaudy church within, a stately 
 structure without, enshrining a black image of the Virgin, almost 
 as black as ebony, which some believe came miraculously from 
 heaven, as fully as ever the Ephesians believed in the heaven- 
 descended character of the image of their great goddess Diana. 
 This singular shrine is frequented by multitudes of penance- 
 doing people, who go thither at the impulse of their anxious half- 
 awakened consciences, under guidance of their priests, to de- 
 posit their offerings, perform their prayers, and quiet their souls 
 with the hope, by Mary's help, of escaping unscathed both Hell 
 and Purgatory. 
 
CHAP, xxxiv.] PILGRIMAGE OF EINSIEDELN. 153 
 
 The multitude of pilgrims is sometimes prodigious. When 
 the anniversary festival of the miraculous consecration of the 
 shrine comes on the Sabbath, it lasts fifteen days, and is a great 
 collective jubilee. From every quarter the pilgrims flock as to 
 the opened gate of Heaven. Here they may have pleasures by 
 the way, commuted for by light penances, or by the pilgrimage 
 itself, indulgences for future pleasure, and pardons, unlimited, for 
 sin. From the year 1820 to 1840, the number of pilgrims an- 
 nually has been at an average of more than 150,000. This vast 
 concourse of strangers keeps the town and parish of Einsiedeln 
 in a thriving business of innkeeping, merchandise, and various 
 light manufactures for the " Star of the Sea," the " Queen of 
 Heaven." As of old the Ephesians made silver shrines for 
 Diana, and by her worship got their own wealth, so the Einsie- 
 delners make images, shrines, and pictures for Mary, and by this 
 craft maintain a thrifty state. Around the great church in front 
 and on each side, as well as in the village, are rows of stalls or 
 shops for the sale of books, beads, pictures, images, and a thou- 
 sand knicknacks in honor of the Virgin, and as a portable Me- 
 moria Technica of her worship. The Pope's letter in her behalf 
 makes appropriate display among all these treasures, and as it 
 were fixes their value, just as the Pontifical stamp coins money. 
 It makes one's heart ache to see the mournful superstition of the 
 people. Indeed the whole Establishment of the Virgin in the 
 Romish worship is one of the most prodigious transactions of 
 spiritual fraud, one of the vastest pieces of forgery and specula- 
 tion in the history of our race. It is a great South Sea bubble 
 of religious superstition, by which thousands make a fortune in 
 this world, but millions make shipwreck of their souls for ever. 
 
 The Pope and the Priesthood are joint stockholders of a great 
 bank in Heaven, which they have reared on false capital, and 
 of which they have appointed Mary the supreme and perpetual 
 Directress. So the Pope and the Priests issue their bills of credit 
 on Mary, and for the people the whole concern is turned into a 
 sort of savings bank, where believers deposit their Ave Marias, 
 their pilgrimages, their penances, their orisons and acts of grace, 
 receiving now, for convenience in this world, drafts from the 
 Pope, and expecting to receive their whole reversionary fortune 
 
154 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxiv. 
 
 from Mary in Paradise. If this be not as sheer, pure, unsophis- 
 ticated a form of paganism, as the annals of Heathen Mythology 
 ever disclosed or perfected, we are at a loss to know what consti- 
 tutes paganism. The artful mixture of the Gospel scheme of 
 redemption, and reference to it, in this Marianic system, makes 
 it, if not a stronger poison, a far more subtle and dangerous de- 
 lusion for the mind. 
 
 The Romish scheme as here demonstrated is a system of me- 
 diators and courts of appeal, which puts the soul as far as possible 
 from the Great Mediator, and prevents all direct access to the 
 fountain of a Saviour's blood. Here we have the Pope accrediting 
 the saints, the saints interceding with Mary, Mary interceding 
 with Christ. The system in general, and Einsiedeln in particular, 
 with the legendary literature and litanies connected with it, con- 
 stitutes a great development of the common faith and literature 
 of the Middle Ages, the idea of which, examined not in the com- 
 mon mind, but only in a few great intellects, has been in some 
 quarters so applauded even by professed Protestants. Ages of 
 Faith, forsooth, where true faith was rendered almost impossible, 
 and all the life of the soul was one vast superstition ! 
 
 In front of the great Einsiedeln Church there is a fountain, 
 with fourteen compartments or jets, at one of which the common 
 people say and believe our Saviour drank, though when, or how, 
 or by what possibility, it would puzzle the staunchest Judoeus 
 Apellas to tell. If this place were Sychar, nigh to the parcel of 
 ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph, or even if Einsiedeln 
 were on the way to Egypt from the Holy Land, such a legend 
 were more possibly accountable and admissible ; but here in the 
 Alpine Mountains, on the way from Schwytz to Zurich, no man 
 can imagine how such a tradition came about. And yet the poor 
 people believe it. I saw a peasant with the utmost gravity and 
 reverence taking fourteen drinks in succession, in order that he 
 might be sure he had got the right one ; and probably all the 
 more ignorant pilgrims do the same. Simultaneously with him, 
 a flock of geese were drinking round the fountain, but with much 
 more wit, to save the trouble of going the circuit, they dipped 
 their splashing bill-cups in the reservoir below, into which all the 
 
CHAP, xxxiv.] SUPERSTITIONS OF THE VIRGIN. 155 
 
 fourteen jets pour their streams together, being sure that the con- 
 tents of the sacred one must necessarily be there also. 
 
 And do you really think that a goose has so much sense ? Do 
 you think a man can have so much folly ? I would answer : 
 Which ought to be the greatest marvel, that a goose should con- 
 clude, since all the jets fall into the pool, that there can be no one 
 jet, the water of which is not there, or that a man should have so 
 much sad and blind credulity, as to believe that Jesus Christ once 
 drank there, and that if he drinks at the same jet, his soul will be 
 benefited ? Which, I ask, ought to be the greatest marvel ? Is it 
 not a folly almost incredible, almost equal to the mad enthusiasm 
 of the tunic- worshippers at Treves, Holy Coat, pray for us ! 
 And what is to be said of a religion, which, instead of endeavor- 
 ing to cure people of their ignorance, just takes advantage of it, 
 enshrining and maintaining in state every absurd phantasm that 
 a frightened superstitious brain can coin ? It is the veriest 
 trickery, worthy of a Turkish Santon, a religious jugglery, not 
 half so respectable as that of Jannes and Jambres, to cajole the 
 common uneducated mind in this manner. And it passes one's 
 comprehension how educated men, in other respects upright and 
 honest, can connive at the cherishing of such lunacies among 
 the people. 
 
 It is not merely the nature of these things as a curious system 
 of superstitions that we wish to look at. The philosophic travel- 
 ler desires to observe, and is bound to observe, their effect upon 
 the character of the people, the manner in which they take hold 
 of the mind, the sort of atmosphere which they form around the 
 common heart and life of the multitude. This is one of the 
 most curious and instructive investigations in all a man's jour- 
 neyings in Europe, especially when he comes upon an enclosure 
 into which the light and influences of the Reformation have 
 never penetrated, and where Romanism, not having come in 
 contact with systems or controversies, that might shake the faith 
 of its votaries, may be sounded in its depths in the souls invested 
 with it. There is too much of a disposition to set down a Bro- 
 testant Traveller's notes on the Romish system as he sees it, to 
 the score of bigotry or religious prejudice. This is both unfair 
 and unwise, for it tends to make travellers neglectful of observing 
 
156 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxiv. 
 
 the workings of foreign religious systems, or restricted and un- 
 candid in giving their impressions to the public. There is nothing 
 that a traveller ought to watch more closely, or report more fully 
 and fairly, than the nature of these two things, religion and edu- 
 cation, among the people where he journeys. What should we 
 say, if M. De Tocqueville in writing of us in America, had ab- 
 stained from all notices and remarks on our religious system, 
 because this would have rendered his book obnoxious to some, 
 and distasteful to Others, and might have injured its popularity 
 and acceptableness ? A man travels in Europe blindfold, who 
 either does not observe, or neglects to record, the workings of 
 the great religious system, or who sees it, not in its effects on the 
 whole character of the people or on common minds, but only in 
 its festival ceremonies in gorgeous cathedrals. It is to be feared 
 that many persons look upon Romanism only with the outward 
 eye, and only in its outward observances, without attempting to 
 .race its progress and its influence on the mind and in the heart. 
 
 I purchased and brought away with me several of the little 
 images of the Virgin, which arc sold in countless quantities for 
 the use of worshippers. They look very much like the portable 
 images of the household gods of Egypt, which I obtained several 
 years ago while travelling in that country. They may lie on 
 the same shelf in a man's cabinet of curiosities. And what a 
 curious concatenation, after four thousand years, which brings 
 the idolatry of the earliest pagan system, and that of the pro- 
 fessedly Christian system, at the two extremes, so singularly 
 together ! Looking at these two sets of images, which a man 
 may carry side by side in his trousers pocket, it is difficult to 
 believe that there was one particle more or less of superstition 
 and idolatry in the use of the one than of the other. For a poor 
 peasant now may be as complete and unconscious an idolater of 
 his " Star of the Sea," with the rude image which he carries in 
 his pocket, or about his neck, as the ancient Egyptian peasant 
 ever was of his Isis or Osiris. Indeed, the idolatry, whatever it 
 be, which comes after Christianity, must, in some respects, be 
 worse than that which preceded it. 
 
 I gathered likewise several of the little tracts issued at Ein- 
 siedeln concerning the Virgin, the Shrine and the pilgrimage, 
 
CHAP, xxxiv.] IMAGES AND TRACTS. 157 
 
 constituting the catechisms of the people, and revealing, better 
 than anything else, the water- courses, so to speak, of the supersti- 
 tion in their hearts. One of these consists of Litanies for the 
 invocation of the Virgin, with an incredible number and repeti- 
 tion of her titles, and accompanying prayers and supplications 
 to her in all hours and circumstances of danger and distress, 
 from the first moment of temptation, to the hour of death and 
 the day of judgment, with a depth of earnestness and even 
 anguish of soul, that exhausts all the religious sentiment of our 
 fallen nature. " O Virgin Mother of God ! in all our pains and ~ 
 tribulations come to our aid, and we will love and bless you to 
 all eternity. Amen." 
 
 Another of these tracts consists of an ancient song upon the 
 miraculous dedication of the Holy Chapel of the Virgin, which 
 is said to have been visibly consecrated by our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in honor of his most holy Mother, the fourteenth of September, 
 of the year 948. To this is added a long prayer to be said be- 
 fore the holy Chapel or the Holy Image of Our Lady, and a 
 shorter prayer to be said before a portable image, by those who 
 cannot serve the Virgin at her grand altar at Einsiedeln, for 
 which last prayer two hundred days' indulgence are gained by 
 gift of the Pope. Three paler nosier s and three Ave Marias 
 answer instead of this prayer for those who do not know how to 
 read. Then follows a prayer to Saint Meinrad, the first wor- 
 shipper of the image, and a martyr in the Chapel, addressed in 
 the prayer as the mignon or dear one of Mary. Saint Meinrad 
 is called upon to intercede with the " Almighty Mother," and to 
 obtain for devout penitents the pardon of their sins, and the pre- 
 servation of their bodies from all dangers and their souls from 
 damnation. In the supplication to the Virgin the soul is repre- 
 sented as fleeing from the wrath of God, to be protected by her in 
 the day of judgment ; and the sinner renders up his last sigh into 
 her hands, that his soul may praise her for ever in a blessed 
 eternity. 
 
 O wide and sad and powerful delusion! To all this variety 
 of expedients, to all these successive ranks of spiritual lawyers, 
 men run with costly fees in their hands, rather than straight to 
 Christ ! All this stately apparatus of ages, altars and images 
 
158 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxiv. 
 
 with men adoring them, crosses on the garments, crosses about 
 the neck, crosses by the road-side, and pilgrims kneeling at them, 
 while the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world 
 stands by unnoticed, and the voice, " Come unto me !" is never 
 heard. 
 
 It is a beautiful, though quaint gem of rude poetry, by which 
 George Herbert has illustrated the difference between the vain 
 and the true search after Peace. If any of my readers are tired 
 of the Pilgrimage to Einsiedeln, they may have something 
 sweeter to dwell upon in Herbert's lines. 
 
 " Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell ? I humbly crave 
 
 Let me once know. 
 I sought thee in a secret cave, 
 
 And asked if Peace were there, 
 A hollow wind did seem to answer, No ; 
 Go, seek elsewhere. 
 
 I did ; and going, did a rainbow note : 
 
 Surely, thought I, 
 This is the lace of Peace's coat : 
 
 I will search out the matter : 
 But while I looked, the clouds immediately 
 
 Did break and scatter. 
 
 Then went I to a garden, and did spy 
 
 A gallant flower, 
 The Crown Imperial : Sure, said I, 
 
 Peace at the root must dwell ; 
 But when I digged, I saw a worm devour 
 
 What showed so well. 
 
 At length I met a reverend good old man : 
 
 Whom when for Peace 
 I did demand, he thus began : 
 
 There was a Prince of old 
 In Salem dwelt, who lived with good increase 
 
 Of flock and fold. 
 
 He sweetly lived ; yet sweetness did not save 
 
 His life from foes ; 
 But after death, out of his grave 
 
 There sprang twelve stalks of wheat ; 
 Which many wondering at, got some of those 
 
 To plant and set. 
 
CHAP, xxxiv.] THE BREAD OF LIFE. 159 
 
 It prospered strangely, and did soon disperse 
 
 Through all the earth : 
 For they that taste it do rehearse 
 
 What virtue lie therein ; 
 A secret virtue, bringing Peace and Mirth 
 
 By flight of sin. 
 
 Take of this grain, which in my garden grows, 
 
 And grows for you : 
 Make bread of it ; and that repose 
 
 And Peace, which everywhere 
 With so much earnestness you do pursue, 
 
 Is only there, 
 The Bread of Life, for ever fresh and fair." 
 
160 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP xxxv 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Zurich and Zwingle. Banishment of Protestants from Locarno. 
 
 THE Stork Inns ! I know not why the hotels should be likened 
 to such fowl as the Stork, the Vulture, and others of that ilk, 
 unless it be on account of their long bills. Such as these are, 
 however, somewhat favorite appellations for the inns of Germany 
 and Switzerland, and a tired traveller may find himself very 
 comfortable in their hospitalities, not reckoning without his host. 
 A man may spend delightfully at Zurich much more time than 
 we did, whether he be lodged at the Stork, the Stag, the Bear, 
 the Lion, the Peacock, the Black Eagle (if he can find any such 
 inns in the place), or at the hotel Baur, to which Mr. Murray 
 will direct him. I like a pleasant title for an inn ; there is 
 something friendly and attractive in it. The Quid pro Quo would 
 be an excellent cognomen ; whether you render it something for 
 somebody, or sure of your money' *s worth, or entertainment for man 
 and beast. There is more inn-ward significance in the titles of 
 Inns, than most men dream of; and probably a philosophic tra- 
 veller would find many a cud of contemplation both curious and 
 instructive, should he set himself to trace the character and 
 habits of nations in the names and sign-pictures of their inns, 
 from the St. George and the Dragon of merry England, to the 
 Three Kings of Germany, and the Hotel of the Universe in 
 France. 
 
 Zurich is a town of about 15,000 inhabitants, much given to 
 manufacturing and literature, careful of education, prudent, and 
 industrious, prosperous, ancestral, old-fashioned. You see here 
 a Cathedral of the tenth century, where Zwingle preached in the 
 sixteenth. Noble heroic times and spirits were here during the 
 fires of the Reformation. Coverdale's old Bible, the first entire 
 
CHAP, xxxv.] ZURICH AND THE REFORMATION. 161 
 
 English version of the Scriptures, was printed here in 1535 ; 
 and here great men, driven from England by the fatal reign of 
 Mary, came to worship as exiles, where in the enjoyment of the 
 hospitality of Zurich, they could cherish their faith, and wait for 
 God to help them. One of the greatest helps God ever gave to 
 the English Reformers was the bringing them to this place and 
 to Geneva, where the forms of glory in creation were so grandly 
 in unison with the excitement of their souls under the discoveries 
 of divine truth, and where they learned such lessons of freedom 
 from the republican simplicity of the Reformation out of Eng- 
 land. There they saw those wonders of the world, unseen before 
 for ages, those early simple forms of government, unhierarchi- 
 calj unmonarchical, in the Church without a bishop, and the State 
 without a king. 
 
 I am not afraid of fatiguing my readers with landing-places 
 of good poetry, and they may be glad to see, what perhaps some 
 of them have not seen, a copy of the verses, which the Poet Mont- 
 gomery tells us appeared in nearly all the Genevan editions of 
 that translation of the Bible, which was made during the reign of 
 Queen Mary, by those illustrious exiles, John Knox, Miles Cover- 
 dale, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, and others. This 
 translation of the Bible may in some measure be considered as 
 one of the results of Queen Mary's fires. 
 
 " On the incomparable treasure of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 " Here is the Spring, where waters flow 
 
 To quench our heat of sin ; 
 Here is the Tree, where Truth doth grow, 
 To lead our lives therein. 
 
 Here is the Judge, that stints the strife, 
 
 Where men's devices fail ; 
 Here is the Bread, that feeds the Life, 
 
 That Death cannot assail. 
 
 The tidings of Salvation dear 
 
 Come to our ears from hence ; 
 The Fortress of our Faith is here, 
 
 And Shield of our defence. 
 
 12 
 
162 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [OHAP. xxxv. 
 
 Then be not like the Hog, that hath 
 
 A pearl at his desire, 
 But takes more pleasure at the trough, 
 
 And wallowing in the mire. 
 
 Read not this Book, in any case, 
 
 But with a single eye ; 
 Read not, but first desire God's grace 
 
 To understand'thereby. 
 
 Pray still in Faith, with this respect, 
 
 To fructify therein ; 
 That knowledge may bring this effect, 
 
 To mortify thy sin. 
 
 Then happy thou, in all thy life, 
 
 What so to thee befalls ; 
 Yea, double happy thou shalt be, 
 
 When God by death thee calls." 
 
 Of a clear sunset the view of Zurich down the Lake is most 
 superbly beautiful. There is a mixture of grandeur in its beauty, 
 owing to the magnificent outline of distant mountains, without 
 which it might be somewhat tame. But any scenery would be 
 tame after a few weeks spent from Night till Morn and Morn till 
 Eve, by sunlight and moonlight, amidst mountains covered or 
 crowned with snow. It is surprising what an exciting, passionate 
 effect those piles of snow hanging in the horizon produce upon 
 the mind ; you never tire of the sight, nor lose your sense of its 
 novelty and sublimity ; and when you are without it, you desire 
 it ; a portion of the mind of creation seems abstracted. It is 
 like the great sea in the landscape. 
 
 Zurich presents many points and sights of interest, but of all 
 the things offered to the stranger, the pet lions to me have been 
 Zuinglius' own old Bible, with his own notes in the margin, and 
 two or three letters from the lovely Lady Jane Grey in her own 
 most beautiful hand-writing. Zuinglius' notes were most fre- 
 quent, I observed, upon the minor prophets ; a very characteristic 
 indication, if it might be taken for a proof of his preferences in 
 the Word of God. For there is a fire, a boldness, and a straight- 
 forward simple energy and plainness of dealing in the minor pro- 
 
CHAP, xxxv.] ZURICH AND THE REFORMATION. 163 
 
 phets, which wonderfully marked the character of the Swiss Re- 
 former. The prophets Amos and Hosea would be likely to be 
 favorites with him. He called no man master on earth, and 
 labored faithfully for his Master in Heaven. He and Luther 
 and Melancthon must have had a joyful meeting with one another, 
 and with Paul and Peter and John, and other old disciples and 
 worthies. How they talked over the scenes of the Reformation 
 and of the great primeval spread of the gospel beginning at 
 Jerusalem ! 
 
 The Reformers, as well as the Apostles, worked and wrote, 
 much of their time, with Death full in view and there is nothing 
 like that to give fire to a man's thoughts, fervor to his feelings, 
 and such an earnestness and solemnity of tone to his utterances, 
 as will compel men to heed them. Almost every word was like 
 a last word, and like a testimony amidst the fire. While this 
 was the case, their communications one with another, and with 
 the people, had a grave sublime impression and prophecy of 
 danger and of suffering, very powerful upon a soul under the 
 seizure of divine truth and grace. There was little room for 
 declamation, or superficial or artificial eloquence, in such circum- 
 stances everything came straight from the soul, and went 
 straight to the soul, driven by conviction. Life was a great 
 solemn tragedy. The bare utterance of truth was like storming 
 a breach at the mouth of cannon. Hence the decisive energy, 
 conciseness, and power of the Reformers. 
 
 It is not so now in Germany ; the new reformation is indeed a 
 revolution, but of a much lower kind ; the Spirit of God evi- 
 dently thus far has much less to do with it, and though it is 
 doubtless one of God's great shakings and overturnings, in pre- 
 paration for the administration of the Spirit, it must be regarded 
 thus far principally as preparation. The Question now is Re- 
 ligious Liberty ; in the first Reformation it was Religious LIFE : 
 there lies the difference. After Life comes Liberty, but you are 
 not so sure that after Liberty comes Life. Men may mistake 
 license for liberty, even in religion ; and as in the Canton de 
 Vaud, license and despotism may go hand in hand, imposing fet- 
 ters on the Church and on the soul. 
 
 Zurich owes much of the prosperity and learning by which it 
 
164 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. xxxv. 
 
 is distinguished, to its hearty acceptance and defence of the doc- 
 trines and followers of the Reformation. It is a most impressive 
 lesson to compare the history of Zurich at the north, with that of 
 Locarno at the south, of the Swiss territory. About the year 
 1530 a devout monk from Milan, Beccaria by name, came to 
 Locarno as an earnest teacher of Evangelical Truth. The 
 Romish governor of the bailiwick had the preacher thrown into 
 prison, hoping in this way to stop the fire of the Reformation from 
 spreading. But it had already burned too deep and too far ; the 
 people surrounded the castle of the governor and compelled him 
 to release their preacher, who afterwards escaped into the Val 
 Misocco. The next step of the governor, under authority of the 
 seven Romish Cantons, was to command all the disciples of the 
 Reformation to attend mass, under pain of outlawry. The Pope, 
 by his Nuncio with the Priests, continued to aggravate the per- 
 secution, until the resolution was taken to banish the Protestants 
 with their families from their homes for ever. The decree was 
 issued in March, 1555. In the town-hall of Locarno, one hun- 
 dred and fifty followers of the Reformed faith received sentence 
 of exile, and immediately set out, amidst all the severity of the 
 season, across savage mountains, to find a kinder home, where 
 the beliefs so dear to conscience, and so sacred to the sight of 
 God, would be revered by man, and permitted in their cherished 
 exercise. 
 
 From that period, the decay of Locarno in industry and pros- 
 perity followed, while Zurich received a new source of wealth 
 and an additional element of art and refinement. " The evan- 
 gelical confederates," says Zschokke, " welcomed them with true 
 Christian charity, and more than a hundred of these unfortunate 
 exiles, amongst whom were many affluent and learned men, as 
 Orelli, Muralt, and others, found an asylum at Zurich, where 
 their families are distinguished to the present day. By their 
 means the art of weaving silk was introduced into Zurich ; they 
 also established mills and dyeing houses, and contributed so much 
 by their industry to the prosperity of the town, that its celebrity 
 was soon extended far beyond the limits of Switzerland." 
 
 After the sentence of banishment from Locarno had been pro- 
 nounced by the deputies, the Pope's Nuncio, with a couple of 
 
CHAP, xxxv.] ZURICH AND THE REFORMATION. 165 
 
 Inquisitors, made their appearance, and with great severity ex- 
 claimed against the mildness of the punishment. They demanded 
 of the council, on pain of the Pope's indignation, to add the 
 penalty of confiscation to that of banishment, to take away all the 
 properly of the exiles, and to separate from them their children 
 also, in order to have them educated in the Romish faith. The 
 Romish deputies, to their praise be it spoken, would not listen to 
 these cruel persuasions on the part of the Priests and his Holi- 
 ness, but made answer that they never reversed a sentence once 
 pronounced. 
 
166 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvi. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 Scenery on the Lake of Zurich. Poetry for Pilgrims. Grandeur of the 
 Lake of Wallenstadt. 
 
 THE scenery on the Lake of Zurich resembles that upon Long 
 Island Sound, and upon some of our New-England rivers. It is 
 of a quiet beauty, with an air of neatness, freedom, and content 
 in the villages, which appear to great advantage, rising with their 
 church steeples and tiled roofs up the hill sides from the lake. 
 The day we left for Wallenstadt and Coire, the steamer was 
 crowded with pilgrims for Einsiedeln. Most of them landed at 
 Richtensweil, for a walk of lead-tellings and aves over the moun- 
 tains, to the shrine of their faith, the " Star of the Sea." God 
 grant they may one day find in Christ that " rest unto their 
 souls," which they will seek in vain at the sooty image of Mary 
 in Einsiedeln. Neither age nor infirmity can move them from 
 their purpose. Dr. Beattie, in his excellent work on Switzerland, 
 tells us that while he and his friends were spending the month of 
 September near the Lake of Zurich, they saw among the pilgrims 
 a venerable matron a hundred and eight years old, who had walked 
 every step of the way from the remotest corner of Normandy in 
 France, for the performance of a vow to Mary of the Swiss 
 Mountains ! What singular energy of superstition, at a time 
 when all the faculties of life wear out ! The vesper hymns of 
 the pilgrims rose impressively upon the air in the still autumnal 
 evenings, and one idea, one principle, seemed to govern and ab- 
 sorb them all. Many of them, Dr. Beattie remarks, looked sickly, 
 wan, and exhausted, the health, which they came sadly to beg of 
 Mary at Einsiedeln, being lost still more hopelessly by the fatigues 
 and fastings of the way. 
 
 Poor, deluded pilgrims ! Is it not sad to see them, wandering 
 the world over after health and peace, but never coming to the 
 Great Physician ! Rest, rest, rest ; this is the object of all their 
 
CHAP, xxxvi.] POETRY FOR PILGRIMS. 167 
 
 toils, toils, toils ; but no toils of the body can ever give inward 
 quiet, or allay sin's fitful fever in the soul, or prevent the remorse- 
 ful tones in the depths of our fallen being, that are ever and anon 
 rushing up with wild prophecies from the soul's inner chambers, 
 like the sound of a gong in subterranean dungeons. Alas, what 
 a mistake, to wander so far, so sadly, so wearily without, for that 
 which is to be found only within, and only in Christ within. 
 These angel will-worshippers, and voluntary humilitarians, and 
 body-punishers, are the strangest quacks that ever meddled with 
 disease. Physical blisters to soothe an irritated conscience, to lull 
 the mental anxieties into forgetfulness, to draw forth the rooted 
 sorrow of a wounded spirit, to quiet the feverish apprehensions 
 of a coming judgment ! O for a word from Christ, a look, to unseal 
 the fountain of tears, a whisper, I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE 
 LIFE. All the cantharides of penance, sackcloth and ashes, 
 stripes on the body, pebbles in the shoes, rough pilgrimages over 
 desert and mountain, fasts and aves and orisons in arithmetical 
 progression, did ever one of them or all together put a man at 
 peace with his conscience, or extract the thorn, or charm the 
 serpent in one of his sins ? 
 
 What a simple thing is the Gospel ! How all heaven, in know- 
 ledge and blessedness, is comprehended in that one precious word, 
 I am the Way, the Truth, the Life ! The Gospel, applicable to 
 all, the same in all places, in all times, in the cottage and the 
 palace, in the city and the wilderness, in caves and dens of the 
 earth and great houses, with rich tables, or the crumbs from 
 them, in fine linen or in sheepskins and goatskins, with rich and 
 poor, with bond and free ; the Gospel, the same simple all-suffi- 
 cient food and remedy, Christ all and in all, the supply of all 
 wants, the recompense for all evils, the healing of all diseases, 
 the world's medicine, happiness and transfiguration ! Here and 
 here only you have the impulse and soul of all lasting reforms, 
 the reformation of all reformers, the beginning and the end of all 
 true pilgrimages, the consolation and support of all pilgrims. 
 " Must I forsake the soil and air," said Baxter, 
 
 " Must I forsake the soil and air, 
 Where first I drew my vital breath ? 
 That way may be as near and fair, 
 
108 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvi. 
 
 Whence I may come to Thee by death. 
 All countries are my Father's lands ; 
 Thy Sun, thy Love, doth shine on all ; 
 We may in all lift up pure hands, 
 And with acceptance on Thee call. 
 
 What if in prison I must dwell, 
 May I not there converse with Thee ? 
 Save me from sin, thy wrath, and hell, 
 Call me thy child, AND I AM FREE ! 
 No walls or bars can keep Thee out,- 
 None can confine a holy soul ; 
 The streets of heaven it walks about, 
 None can its liberty control." 
 
 Now, because it is suitable to this part of our pilgrimage, and 
 fine in itself, though rude and plain, I shall add Baxter's Vale- 
 diction, so faithful and bold in its rebuke of that vain show, 
 wherein all men naturally are not so much pedestrians, as they 
 are ambitious runners and wrestlers. With this we will leave 
 our Einsiedelners, and proceed to Wallenstadt. 
 
 " Man walks in a vain show. 
 They know, yet will not know, 
 Sit still when they should go, 
 
 But run for shadows : 
 While they might taste and know 
 The living streams that flow, 
 And crop the flowers that grow, 
 
 In Christ's sweet meadows. 
 Life's better slept away, 
 
 Than as they use it ; 
 In sin and drunken play 
 
 Vain men abuse it. 
 
 They dig for hell beneath, 
 They labor hard for death, 
 Run themselves out of breath 
 
 To overtake it. 
 Hell is not had for naught, 
 Damnation's dearly bought, 
 And with great labor sought, 
 
 They'll not forsake it. 
 Their souls are Satan's fee, 
 
 He'll not abate it ; 
 
CHAP, xxxvi.] RAPPERSCHWYL. 169 
 
 Grace is refused, that's free, 
 Mad sinners hate it. 
 
 Is this the world men choose, 
 For which they heaven refuse, 
 And Christ and grace abuse, 
 
 And not receive it ? 
 ^ Shall I not guilty be, 
 
 Of this in some degree, 
 
 If hence God would me free, 
 
 And I'd not leave it ? 
 My soul, from Sodom fly, 
 
 Lest wrath there find thee ; % 
 
 Thy refuge -rest is nigh, 
 
 Look not behind thee." 
 
 From Zurich to Schmerikon, at the other end oT the lake to- 
 wards Italy, is about twenty- six miles, the greatest width of the 
 lake being only three miles, and generally much narrower. The 
 banks are beautifully sprinkled with white cottages, farm-houses, 
 and thriving villages, the abodes of industry and peace. Over 
 the verdant wooded mountains, with such a green and richly cul- 
 tivated base, rise up the snowy peaks, like revelations of another 
 world, calling you away to its glory. If you are familiar with 
 the writings of Klopstock, Zimmerman and Gessner, you probably 
 know something of the inspiration which such scenery tends to 
 kindle and keep burning in a sensitive mind. Gessner was a 
 native of Zurich ; Zimmerman's residence was on the borders 
 of the lake at Richtensweil. 
 
 At Rapperschwyl, you are in the Canton of St. Gall, opposite 
 the longest bridge in the world, and probably the worst, taking 
 into consideration the vast extent of its qualities, four thousand 
 eight hundred feet. It is a singular feature on the lake, when 
 viewed from the mountains. The village of Rapperschwyl 
 is a place to put an artist with his portfolio in good humor \ a 
 feudal old town, an ancient grey castle, an old church, old walls, 
 and fine picturesque points of view overlooking the water. 
 Thence we proceeded to Schmerikon, where we embarked on 
 board the diligence for Wesen, and then found ourselves at the 
 western extremity of the Lake of Wallenstadt, suddenly in the 
 
170 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvi. 
 
 midst of some of the grandest, most glorious, most exciting scenery 
 in the world. 
 
 There is no describing it ; at least no possibility of justly con- 
 veying its magnificence. The Lake of Wallenstadt, about twelve 
 miles long, is preeminent in beauty and grandeur. It is inferior 
 only to the Lake of Lucerne, and that is saying much. There 
 is the greatest majesty and glory in the forms of the mountains 
 that rise out of it, while the side gorges that open off from it are 
 picturesque, rich and beautiful. We felt in going from the 
 scenes of open luxuriance around Zurich, that it was good to get 
 again among the mountains, it was like going back into the fort- 
 ress of the soul. Those mighty towering masses seem to prop 
 and elevate the inward being. They look down upon you so 
 silent, so 'awful, so expressive; you have the same feelings in 
 entering among them, that you have in going beneath the dome 
 of some vast religious temple, the same that you have in walking 
 on the shore of the ocean. We dined on deck on board the 
 steamer, but it really seemed incongruous to be eating amidst 
 such grand and solemn scenery ; the table of a restaurant set in 
 the middle of St. Peter's, would have seemed almost as much in 
 keeping. Nevertheless, men must eat, drink, and sleep, though 
 the scenery be ever so beautiful. In the midst of our dinner, we 
 came opposite the point, where in a mountain more than seven 
 thousand feet high, an immense cavern pierces entirely through 
 the summit, so that even from the lake you can look through it 
 and see the sky, though you would think it was a patch of snow 
 you were looking at. 
 
 After a few hours from Wallenstadt through the beautiful 
 scenery of the vale of Scez, we arrived at Ragatz, for a visit to 
 the astounding black glen of the Baths of Pfeffers. The evening 
 threatened a storm, but we had enjoyed a day of great grandeur, 
 and for the night were in good time at the comfortable shelter of 
 an inn, which the guide-books tell you was an old summer resi- 
 dence of the Abbots. 
 
 
CHAP, xxxvii.] BATHS OF PFEFFERS. 171 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Baths of Pfeffers. Gorge of the Tamina. Coire and the Grisons. 
 
 IT rains in torrents. We can no more tell where we are, than 
 if it were midnight. No morn has come; as on the Righi, in 
 russet mantle clad, disclosing in heaven and earth a wide, won- 
 drous, exciting scene of glory and beauty, but rain, rain, rain; 
 grave, determined, steadfast, concentrated rain, and nothing else 
 sensible or visible. You could not guess that there was either 
 mountain, village, or horizon in Switzerland, but now and then, 
 as at breathing intervals, the huge dark masses dripping in mist, 
 loom out of the storm, like the hulks of a wrebked creation. It 
 is, to say the least, a very vigorous break upon the monotony of 
 fair weather, and inasmuch as we have no mountain excursion 
 to make to-day, but a gorge to visit, in which Dante might have 
 chained the tenants of his sixth hell, if the rain holds up, so that 
 we can get to the mouth of it, it may pour on afterwards, without 
 disturbing our progress towards the earth's centre. 
 
 The object for which most travellers stop, as we have done, at 
 Ragatz, is the celebrated cavern of the Baths of PfefFers, the 
 most extraordinary scene, for its compass, in all Switzerland. 
 It is a gorge and cavern combined, a remarkable split in the 
 mountain, deep, dark, ragged, and savage, the sides of which 
 cross their jagged points far above you, so closely, like the teeth 
 of a saw, that only here and there you can see the daylight at 
 the top, and the sky, through the rift, with the trees of the ex- 
 ternal world peeping down upon you. As far below, a torrent 
 is thundering, and you creep, hanging midway to the dripping 
 shelves of the cliff, along a suspended footpath, a couple of planks 
 wide, nearly a quarter of a mile into the heart of the great fis- 
 sure. There, in a crypt in the deep rock, lies the hot fountain, 
 where a cloud of steam rises round you like a vapor bath, and 
 the gush of hot water pours its cascade into the roaring cold 
 
172 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvu. 
 
 torrent below. This torrent, for the convenience of which the 
 mountain seems to have been sundered, is called the Tamina ; 
 it bellows through the gorge with terrific din and fury, shoots 
 past the base of perpendicular and overhanging mountains seven 
 or eight hundred feet high, and after plunging from precipice to 
 precipice in grand cataracts along its deep channel, pours itself 
 into the Rhine. 
 
 From Ragatz to the Baths, it is a constant gradual ascent of 
 about an hour, through scenery romantic and grand, and deep- 
 ening into sublimity as you reach, beneath the overhanging 
 mountains, by the sound of the deep struggling thunder of the 
 Tamina, the grim old Bath-buildings, that rise like a portal in 
 the jaws of hell. From hence up to the hot spring, along the 
 wet, shaking, crazy, old plank bridge, which I have described, 
 with the torrent boiling at the bottom of the chasm, about forty 
 feet beneath you, and the serrated, craggy, intertwisting, over- 
 lapping marble walls rising several hundred feet above you, the 
 passage is such an one as Bunyan might have taken for the type 
 of his Valley of the Shadow of Death. It is a most tremendous 
 scene, before which all your previous experiences of the wild, 
 terrible, and fantastic freaks of nature have to give way in sub- 
 mission. You will never forget this gorge of the Tamina, and 
 these Baths of Pfeffers. 
 
 It is said they were discovered about the year 1000, and that 
 patients used to be let down by ropes from the cliffs into the very 
 fountain, to be steeped there for hours, and drawn up again. The 
 next progressive step in comfort was a number of cells like mag- 
 pies' nests, pinned to the walls around the fountain, where pa- 
 tients might abide the season. Far gone a man must be in 
 disease, and wobegone in spirit, before an abode in that frightful 
 dripping chasm would do him good. In the next age men's ideas 
 in therapeutics were so advanced, that they conducted the hot 
 medicinal water by conduits out of the gorge, and built the grisly 
 bath-houses at the entrance ; and still later they have come to 
 the perfection of the system, by conveying the water down to 
 the comfortable inn at Ragatz. Its temperature at the spring is 
 about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It enjoys a wide and thorough 
 reputation for its healing efficacy. 
 
CHAP, xxxvii.] REVERIE OF THE ALPS. 173 
 
 If it had not been for the rain, we might have enjoyed, from 
 the heights above this terrific gorge, a view as vast and beautiful, 
 as the ravine itself is deep and dreadful. The sketch of it by 
 the artist forms one of the finest landscapes in the Swiss port- 
 folio. Here the Poet Montgomery might have stood at day -break, 
 as we have done upon the Righi, in bright weather, and dreamed 
 that Reverie of the Alps, of which the two opening and closing 
 stanzas are so impressive and sublime. 
 
 " The mountains of this glorious land 
 
 Are conscious beings to mine eye, 
 When at the break of day they stand 
 
 Like giants, looking through the sky, 
 To hail the sun's unrisen car, 
 
 That gilds their diadems of snow, 
 While one by one, as star by star, 
 
 Their peaks in ether glow. 
 
 Their silent presence fills my soul, 
 # When, to the horizontal ray 
 
 The many-tinctured vapors roll 
 
 In evanescent wreaths away, 
 And leave them naked on the scene, 
 
 The emblems of Eternity, 
 The same as they have ever been, 
 
 And shall for ever be ! 
 
 And ye everlasting hills! 
 
 Buildings of God, not made with hands, 
 Whose Word performs whate'er he wills, 
 
 Whose Word, though ye shall perish, stands ; 
 Can there be eyes that look on you, 
 
 Till tears of rapture make them dim, 
 Nor in his works the Maker view, 
 
 Then lose his works in Him ? 
 
 By me, when I behold Him not, 
 
 Or love Him not when I behold, 
 Be all I ever knew forgot : 
 
 My pulse stand still, my heart grow cold ; 
 Transformed to ice, 'twixt earth and sky, 
 
 On yonder cliff my form be seen, 
 That all may ask, but none reply, 
 
 What my offence hath been I" 
 
174 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvn. 
 
 From Ragatz we posted to Coire, in the Canton of the Orisons. 
 It is an old capital of some 5,000 inhabitants, enjoying some 
 peculiar commercial advantages by its position at the confluences 
 of various roads, and on the highway of travel from Italy into 
 Switzerland and Germany. The Canton in the main is Pro- 
 testant, and the democratic government is in a Council of seventy 
 members at Coire. In the Cantons of St. Gall, Glarus, and the 
 Grisons, there are some delightful and rare examples of religious 
 toleration and equality between the two systems that divide the 
 population. Sometimes, the Protestants and Romanists being 
 nearly equal in numbers, the same church is used by them for 
 public worship in turn. This is the case in some parts of the 
 Rheinthal, a valley of the Rhine, which has its three sources in 
 the Canton of the Grisons. In the Canton Glarus, containing 
 about twenty-six thousand inhabitants, though the Protestants 
 number three-fourths of the population, the governmental 
 " council is composed of equal proportions of the inhabitants, 
 Catholics and Protestants," and in some cases the same^chapel 
 is used for both congregations. The churches and schools are 
 established and paid by the government, and parents are required 
 under a certain penalty to send their children for instruction. 
 
 If the traveller wishes to know how that rare thing in Europe, 
 the Voluntary System, acts upon the happiness of the people 
 where it prevails, he may turn to Mr. Murray's short description 
 of the Engadine Valley, with its populous and flourishing vil- 
 lages, where they have " nine months of winter, and three of cold 
 weather." What the writer intended as a blot, appears only as 
 a seal of primitive truth and purity. " Poverty," he says. " is 
 rare, beggary almost unknown, and the people, who are, with the 
 exception of one or two parishes, Protestants, are creditably dis- 
 tinguished for their morality, and are exempt from the vices com- 
 mon in other parts of Switzerland. Their pastors are held in 
 great respect, but their pay is miserable, affording a striking 
 proof of the working of a voluntary system. The Sabbath is 
 strictly observed ; strangers only are allowed on that day to ride 
 or drive until after church time." A voluntary system that pro- 
 duces such fruits as these, is better than all the will- worship of 
 the most lavishly supported hierarchical or state establishments. 
 
CHAP, xxxviii.] COURSE OF THE RHINE. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Course of the Rhine. Louis Philippe, the Royal Schoolmaster at Reiche- 
 nau. Reichenau to Thusis. 
 
 FROM Coire we pass through Reichenau, a little village at the 
 bridges, where the two branches of the Rhine unite, one from the 
 St. Gothard, the other from the pass of the Splugen, to form the 
 " rejoicing and abounding river," that runs in and out at the 
 Lake of Constance, thunders over the falls at Schaff hausen, 
 feeds the pride, patriotism and wine-vats of all Germany, and 
 after its long course of grandeur, fuss and glory, is sponged up 
 by the sands before it can reach the sea. Poor disappointed 
 river ! What an emblem it is of the closing life of some men, 
 who have made a great stir in their day, but go entirely out of 
 men's minds before they die ! 
 
 An emblem of some noisy reformers and agitators without 
 heart, who make a great show of patriotism, benevolence and 
 fearless zeal for a time, but by and by sink down and are heard 
 of no more, in the sand-banks of selfishness and expediency. 
 An emblem more fitly of some truly great men, like Scott and 
 Southey, in whom paralysis overtakes the mental faculties, after 
 they have enriched society with the overflowing treasures of their 
 great genius. But not an emblem of the Christian, who " like 
 the sun seems larger at his setting," and pours as a river of life, 
 into the Ocean of eternity. Nor is it an emblem of that River, 
 the streams whereof make glad the City of God ; for the gladden- 
 ing and glory of its course here, are but things by the way, 
 incidental results, by which it transfigures human society with 
 peace and beauty, while the depth and blessedness of its elements- 
 are then only to be fully seen and known, when out of Death it 
 flows a shining Sea of Life through Eternity. 
 
 There is an inn at Reichenau, formerly a Chateau, which Louis 
 
176 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvin. 
 
 Philippe, King of the French, would perhaps be glad to have 
 transported into the Museum of the Louvre, as a sort of old 
 chrysalis of the living Monarch, more curious, in some respects, 
 than the Sarcophagi of dead Egyptian kings. In this Chateau at 
 Reichenau, in the days of his adversity, while the French Revo- 
 lution, with Napoleon as its Star of the Morning, its Lucifer, 
 was sweeping on its swift and awful wing across the nations, 
 Louis Philippe, the friendless young man, the future Monarch, 
 taught Mathematics and History in a common school ! Com- 
 pelled to fly from Baumgarten in 1793, he brought a secret letter 
 of introduction to M. Jost, the Principal of the burgomaster 
 Tscharner's school, and being appointed a teacher, he found a 
 refuge for near a year, unknown, in this employment. A season 
 of much meditation it must have been to him, of hard and profit- 
 able thinking, of useful trial, and of much enjoyment in nature. 
 Sometimes he stopped in the midst of his Algebraic solutions, as 
 one surrounded in a dream by the din and smoke of the armies 
 of his country, and sometimes he was himself in a reverie in the 
 palace of the Tuileries, in Paris, while the boys were following 
 his compasses and calculations round the wooden globe. Many a 
 pleasant walk he must have had among the mountains, many a 
 refreshing swim in the blue and grey .waters of the Rhine. The 
 schoolmaster may have been happier than the Monarch, and proba- 
 bly was. Fifty-four years ago, how little could he have dreamed 
 the scenes, through which his life of the next half century, as the 
 Actor, instead of the Teacher of history, was to be drawn ! The 
 young pedestrian, with a bundle on his back and a pilgrim's staff, 
 calling himself Monsieur Chabot, knew not that he was on his way 
 to the throne, instead of from it, or that the extremes of his life, 
 almost his first and second childhood, should be the instruction of 
 half a dozen Swiss children, and the governing of thirty millions 
 of French. 
 
 On our way towards this village we passed in sight of the 
 hamlet of Feldsberg, threatened with destruction from the fall 
 of an overhanging mountain more perpendicular by far than the 
 Rossberg. The danger was so imminent, that the inhabitants, 
 some months before, had begged to be received into a neighboring 
 commune, and united with it. But the people of Feldsberg were 
 
CHAP, xxxvin.] INTOLERANCE. 177 
 
 Protestants ; so the authorities of the Romish commune refused 
 to grant their request, unless they would renounce the Protestant 
 Faith, and become Roman Catholics ! This was truly charac- 
 teristic ; and the determination of the poor people to abide by 
 the gospel under the falling mountain, rather than take refuge in 
 Romanism from the Avalanche, was equally so. What disposition 
 has been made of the inhabitants, I know not ; but it is very 
 clear that the religious charity and freedom, applauded in some 
 parts of the Canton, have no place in the neighborhood of this 
 threatened convulsion of nature. There is in this very region a 
 mixture of the two opposite systems of religion quite unexam- 
 pled, the village of Reichenau, for instance, being Romish, while 
 just the other side of the river the hamlet is Protestant. The 
 languages are quite as distinct, one village speaking German, 
 while its next neighbor talks in the Romansch patois. 
 
 The world has made the greatest mistake against its own in- 
 terests in being so intolerant, that ever was made. Sometimes 
 one portion of it has driven away from its bosom the most vital 
 elements of its industry and prosperity, because they could not 
 conform to its hierarchical and religious despotisms. Spain im- 
 poverished herself by driving out the Moors and Jews. France 
 put back her own advancement in agriculture and manufactures 
 irretrievably by burning out the Huguenots, and at the same 
 time enriched other countries at her own expense. Italy im- 
 poverished and debilitated herself in like manner by the peremp- 
 tory banishment of some of her best manufacturers, because they 
 were Reformed, and in that measure took the most direct course 
 possible to build up the Protestant City of Zurich, where the 
 banished ones from Locarno found a hospitable refuge with all 
 their wealth, arts, and industry. They who will leave a country 
 for their faith, rather than desert their faith, are likely to be the 
 best of its citizens, and when you draw them off, you take away 
 the life-blood of the country. This is one way in which, by the 
 constitution of Divine Providence, men's sins come down upon 
 their own pate, and nations reap the fire of their own persecu- 
 tions. They sow their fields with fire, and gather the fire into 
 their own garners. They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. 
 But men do not learn this, until they see it in history, and even 
 
 VOL. n. 13 
 
178 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxvm. 
 
 there they rarely turn the light of their own experience upon 
 the future, so that selfishness and passion often beguile one 
 generation to a plunge into the same mistakes that have ruined 
 the preceding. 
 
 From Reichenau we posted the same evening to Thusis, a 
 village of about seven hundred inhabitants, situated against the 
 jaws of the wildest, most tremendous defile in Switzerland, on 
 a mountain terrace or projection of unequal height, from which 
 you enjoy down the open valley the loveliest variety of pros- 
 pect, in river, plain, mountain, castle, and hamlet. By one of 
 those great calamities, which so often overwhelm the Swiss vil- 
 lages, this thriving little town has been but recently destroyed 
 by a conflagration. No man can measure the distress which 
 must fall upon the inhabitants ; indeed, there seems no possible 
 resource, by which they could recover from so desolating a blow. 
 It is most melancholy to think of the misery that must be en- 
 dured by them. 
 
 The romantic country through which we have now been tra- 
 velling possesses more remembrances of feudal tyranny and war 
 in the half-ruined castles, so thickly scattered along the Rhine- 
 vales, than any other part of Switzerland. Sometimes they can 
 scarcely be distinguished from the rocks on which they are built, 
 they have become so storm-beaten, old, and moss-grown. Some of 
 them surmount the crags in such picturesque boldness, apparently 
 inaccessible and impregnable, that you wonder both how they 
 were constructed, and how they were conquered. They are 
 remnants of a despotic, warlike, social state, like the huge fossil 
 remains of a past world of all-devouring monsters. The land- 
 scapes commanded by them are scenes of the greatest grandeur 
 and beauty, though that was the element least thought of in their 
 construction. Now the traveller winds his way along, and thinks 
 of the powerful spirit of beauty in Nature, which has subdued 
 them to herself in their decay, and dropping a veil of lone and 
 melancholy grandeur over them, has enshrined the forms of men's 
 tyranny for the delight of man's imagination. 
 
CHAP, xxxix.] HEART 'IN THE UNIVERSE. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 Terrific grandeur of the Splugen. The VIA MALA. Creation as a 
 Teacher of God. 
 
 Is it not perfectly true, that everything which is to have power 
 over man, must come to him through a human heart, must have 
 the tone of the heart ? To get within him, it must proceed from 
 within some one else ; all that is merely external is cold, unap- 
 pealing, lifeless. This is the case indeed with man's works, but 
 not with God's. There is never an object in God's creation, but 
 speaks at once to the heart, as well as to the mind, if the heart 
 be prepared to listen. The universe is glorious, because God 
 made it, and it speaks of Him. Whatever object he has touched 
 with the finger of his power, shall bear that impress till he has 
 annihilated it. Though it were but a withered leaf, driven by 
 the whirlwind, it sparkles with his glory. And there is as much 
 of Him, of his power and love, in a drop of dew trembling on a 
 rose leaf, if rightly appreciated, as in the snowy summit of Mont 
 Blanc burning at sunset. 
 
 All things are steps or links for intercourse with God. Hence, 
 Henry Martyn used to say, when tired of human company and 
 its depravity, and destitute of all Christian communion, that any- 
 thing whatever of God's works was sweet to him. " A leaf," 
 said he, " is good company," for it brought his Father near to 
 him, and he could talk with God. 
 
 It is a blessed, practical, and not merely imaginative habit of 
 mind, by which the things of sense are thus rendered subservient 
 to spiritual purposes, " auxiliar to divine." It is a heavenly 
 faculty, by which the hieroglyphics of himself which the Eternal 
 Being has deigned to write with the finger of his glory upon 
 created things, may be interpreted and read in their splendor and 
 fulness. The Universe is a type of Spiritual Intelligence to the 
 eye that reads it thus, disclosing and reflecting at every turn the 
 
180 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxix. 
 
 knowledge of the glory of its Illuminating Sun. I have seen, 
 says the Poet Wordsworth, in one of his most beautiful strains of 
 imagery, 
 
 " I have seen 
 
 A curious child, that dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intently ; and his countenance soon 
 Brightened with joy : for murmurings from within 
 Were heard, sonorous cadences ! whereby 
 To his belief the Monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea. 
 E'en such a shell the Universe itself 
 Is to the ear of Faith." 
 
 EXCURSION. 
 
 The thought thus beautifully expressed (and it is an exquisitely 
 oeautiful image) is but the reiteration of repeated declarations in the 
 Scriptures in regard to the purpose and meaning of the visible 
 creation of God, Their line is gone out through all the earth, and 
 their words to the end of the world. 
 
 In all God's works there is heart, God's heart, for God is 
 Love ; and he is happy, who feels this, for though every man 
 sees God with his mind, his understanding, no man sees him with 
 the heart, or hears the tone of the heart of Love in creation, 
 who has not something of that love within him. In man's works, 
 heart is the rarest ingredient, the most precious, the most costly, 
 the most seldom to be met with. In God's works, love is the 
 universal element, though power is almost the only element which 
 man notices. But love is the element that speaks to the heart, 
 and happy is the heart that hears its blissful language. 
 
 Hence the beauty of that sonnet imitated by Montgomery from 
 the Italian of Gaetana Passerini. 
 
 " If in the field I meet a smiling flower, 
 Methinks it whispers, ' God created me, 
 And I to Him devote my little hour, 
 In lonely sweetness and humility.' 
 If where the forest's darkest shadows lower, 
 A serpent quick and venomous I see, 
 
CHAP, xxxix.] THE VIA MALA. 181 
 
 It seems to say, ' I too extol the power 
 
 Of Him, who caused me at his will to be.' 
 
 T-he fountain purling, and the river strong, 
 
 The rocks, the trees, the mountains, raise one song ; 
 
 * Glory to God !' re-echoes in mine ear : 
 
 Faithless were I, in wilful error blind, 
 
 Did I not Him in all his creatures find, 
 
 His voice through heaven and earth and ocean hear." 
 
 But what poetry can give a human utterance to the voice that 
 speaks from that dread mountain-rift of Switzerland, the Pass of 
 the Splugen ? Milton should be here to describe it, as he has 
 the war in heaven, with language, feeling, thought, imagery, all, 
 as it were, winged with red lightning and impetuous rage. All 
 the images of grandeur, power, energy in nature, Oceanic, Ti- 
 tanic, Volcanic, the whirlwind, the fiery tempest, the earthquake, 
 elemental war, deluges, convulsions, avalanches, crashing ice- 
 bergs, chained lightning, leaping from crag to crag, and thunder 
 bellowing through the vast and boundless deep, might be ex- 
 hausted, and yet fail to convey to the mind an adequate im- 
 pression of this sublime pass. Four or five miles of it are called 
 the VIA MALA, constituting one continued, tortuous, black, jagged 
 chasm, split through the stupendous mountain ridge from the 
 summit To the base, in perpendicular, angular, and convoluted 
 zigzag rifts, so narrow in some places, that you could almost leap 
 across, yet so deep, that the thunder of the Rhine dies upon the 
 ear in struggling and reverberating echoes upwards. 
 
 Sixteen hundred feet at least the precipices in some places 
 rise perpendicular to heaven, so serrated and torn, the one side 
 from the other, that if the same Almighty Power that rent them, 
 should spring them together, they would shut as closely as a 
 portcullis in its sockets, as a tomb upon its lid. Down in the 
 depths of this fearful fissure thunders the mad river, sometimes 
 lost from sight and scarcely audible in its muffled, subterranean, 
 booming sound, sometimes desperately plunging, sometimes 
 wildly, swiftly, flashing in white foam, sometimes whirling like 
 a maelstrom. 
 
 You enter upon this savage pass from a world of beauty, from 
 the sunlit vale of Domschleg, under the old Etruscan Castle of 
 
182 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxix. 
 
 Realt, spiked in the cliff like a war-club, four hundred feet 
 above you, and totally inaccessible on every side but one. Pass- 
 ing this from Thusis, you are plunged at once into a scene of 
 such concentrated and deep sublimity, such awe-inspiring gran- 
 deur, such overwhelming power, that you advance slowly and 
 solemnly, as if every crag were a supernatural being looking at 
 you. The road is with great daring carried along the perpen- 
 dicular face of crags, being cut from the rock where no living 
 thing could have scaled the mountain, and sometimes it com- 
 pletely overhangs the abyss, a thousand feet above the raging 
 torrent. Now it pierces the rock, now it runs zigzag, now spans 
 the gorge on a light dizzy bridge ; now the mountains frown on 
 each other like tropical thunder-clouds about to meet and dis- 
 charge their artillery, and now you come upon mighty insulated 
 crags, thrown wildly together, covered with fringes of moss and 
 shrubbery, and constituting vast masses of verdure. 
 
 I must here speak of the folly of passing through a scene so 
 magnificently grand in any other way than leisurely on foot. 
 My friend being an invalid, we took a barouche at Thusis, and a 
 fat, surly guide for a driver, but we had no sooner started, than 
 with my friend's consent I cleared myself of this incumbrance, 
 and resumed my old lonely pilgrimage, letting the carriage pass 
 on out of sight before me. Mr. H. soon followed my example, 
 and I could see him now and then with his sketch-book in his 
 hand, leaning over the parapet, and endeavoring to transfer with 
 his pencil some little likeness of portions of the sublime scene. 
 Now and then I got up with him, and found him vexed with the 
 impatient hurry of the coachman, who was very much disposed 
 to drive on alone without us. Without me he did go, and I en- 
 joyed the pleasure of walking back again, to the opening of the 
 gorge at Thusis, admiring the grand features of the scene in the 
 reverse order. And nothing can be finer than the effect, where 
 you look through the ravine as through a mighty perspective, 
 with the Realt Castle hanging to the cliff at its mouth, and the 
 sunny air and earth expanding in such contrast with the frown- 
 ing, gloom-invested, tremendous passage behind you. We leaned 
 over the parapet, and by dropping stones in the roaring torrent 
 below, and computing by our watches the time they took to reach 
 
CHAP, xxxix.] PASS OF THE SPLUGEN. 183 
 
 the water, endeavored to guess at the depth of the chasm. It 
 was dizzy to look at it. The tall black fir forest on the mountain 
 shelves, and the blasted pines on inaccessible peaks, seemed to 
 gaze gravely at us, as if we had come unauthorized into a sanc- 
 tuary of nature too deep and awful to be trodden by the foot of 
 man. 
 
 Just after the entrance from Thusis, the mountain is pierced 
 by the first gallery, at a point where of old the chasm was im- 
 passable and never passed. The peasants gave the unfathomed 
 profound abyss at this place the name of the Verlohren Loch, or 
 Lost Gulf, because no man could trace it, and to get to the valley 
 above, they had to ascend high mountains from Thusis, and come 
 down in a long fatiguing circuit. After some hundreds of years, 
 the engineer of the present road, Pocobelli, undertook to cut 
 through the overhanging mountain along this Lost Gulf a dark 
 tunnel of 216 feet, and then blasted a groove for a thousand feet 
 farther, under the rocky canopy, where your damage passes as 
 on a shelf, with the tremendous gulf beneath you at your left. 
 Now and then the precipices on one side actually hang beetling 
 over the road on the other, and looking up to heaven, it is as if 
 you gazed out from the keep of a dungeon, and one would think 
 you might almost see the stars at noon-day, as from the bottom 
 of a well. 
 
 Looking up the pass from below the second bridge, perhaps 
 the view is finer than in any other part. The bridge itself, with 
 the appalling depth spanned by it, adds to the sublimity. You 
 gain this bridge by a gallery in an overhanging projection of the 
 mountain, and then cross to the other side, looking down and up, as 
 in the central position of the gorge. Owing to the recent heavy 
 rain while we were at Ragatz, the river was now higher than 
 usual, and from the beetling precipices above us the white 
 streams, new-born, were leaping like jets of foam. We passed 
 a most singular and daring, but very simple air bridge that hung 
 above us for the purpose of getting the timber from one side of 
 the gulf, where almost perpendicularly it clothes the mountain, 
 over to the road on the other. A range of cables was suspended 
 from the trunks of enormous pines, some hundreds of feet above 
 the road, and being fastened securely on the other side of the 
 
184 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xxxix. 
 
 gulf, the timber being cut and trimmed for the purpose, was thus 
 swung high in its cradle of air to the place of landing for trans- 
 portation. 
 
 How tremendous would a falling Avalanche be in this place ! 
 But here the mountains, one would think, are too steep for the 
 snow and ice to congregate in sufficient masses. In a dreadful 
 storm in 1834, the river being dammed up by the fragments of 
 rock and timber wedged into the jagged narrow cleft, the water 
 rose near four hundred feet. It poured down the gorge as if an 
 ocean had burst into it, but its ravages were committed princi- 
 pally in the vales above and below the Via Mala. At the village 
 of Splugen twelve houses were swept away, so sudden and violent 
 was the inundation, in some of which, an hour before, the pea- 
 sants had been quietly seated at their supper. The same terrific 
 storm and inundation covered some other of the valleys with a 
 half century of desolation. 
 
 At Andeer I rejoined my friend, whose care had provided a 
 good dinner, besides making all arrangements for getting on to 
 Splugen for the night. There was nothing for me to do but to 
 sit down and rest myself. I had passed and repassed almost the 
 whole of the Via Mala, and would have been glad, if possible, to 
 return through the same stupendous pass the next day, but our 
 course was direct for Italy. 
 
CHAP. XL.] THEOLOGY OF THE SPLUGEN. 185 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 Natural Theology of the Splugen. 
 
 Now, dear friend, what thinkest thou of the moral of this 
 stupendous scene in the preceding chapter ? Dost thou set down 
 this mountain-rift, in thy natural theology, as a chapter of the 
 scars and vestiges of sin, one of the groans of nature in this 
 nether world, wrung out by man's fall ? Or is it to thee an in- 
 structive, exalting, exciting scene of Power, magnificently grand, 
 almost as if thou hadst witnessed the revealed Arm of Omni- 
 potence, and lifting thy heart, mind, soul, thy whole being, up 
 to God ? 
 
 Methinks you answer, that if God meant the world to be a 
 great solemn palace for the teaching of his children, on the very 
 walls of which there should be grand inscriptions and hierogly- 
 phics productive of great thoughts, rousing the mind from slum- 
 ber, rearing the imagination with a noble discipline, he would 
 have scattered here and there just such earthquake-rifts of power 
 and grandeur. We are immortal children in the school-house 
 of our infancy. It is not necessary to suppose that every scar 
 on the face of Nature, deep entrenched and jagged, is an imper- 
 fection or a mark of wrath ; for it may be a scene, where an 
 angel passing by would stop and admire it as a symbol of God's 
 power, a faint comma, as it were, in the revelation of his attri- 
 butes ; it may be a scene, which awakens great thoughts in an 
 angel's bosom, as a hidden lowly daisy does the more gentle 
 ones ; the daisy being a flower, which an angel might stop to 
 gaze at as an emblem of sweetness and humility. 
 
 And in this view, as a hieroglyphic of Power, this fathomless 
 dread gorge is also a proof of Love. It was Love that appointed 
 it as an emblem of Power. So is the great wide Sea, and that 
 Leviathan whom Thou hast made to play therein. So are the 
 
186 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XL. 
 
 volcanoes, the ice-continents, and the burning deserts. All may 
 be works of Love, though they show nothing but Power. And 
 even if it be Power in exercise for the avenging and punishment 
 of sin, even then it is Love ; for every lesson of God's wrath is 
 Love, and where there is sin, wrath is a proof of Love, of Love 
 saving by wrath the lookers on from rushing into wrath. 
 
 There are places in our world, where we may suppose that 
 beings from another planet, conversant with the history of ours, 
 would stop and gaze solemnly, and speak to each other of God's 
 retributive justice.' Such is that black dead sea with arid shores, 
 that rolls where Sodom stood. If angels went to take Lot from 
 the city that was to be burned, how often, when angels pass the 
 place, scarred now with retribution, do they think with shudder- 
 ing of the evil of sin ! Yet even that retribution was invested 
 with the atmosphere of Love, and had not God been Love, he 
 might have let Sodom stand, he might have let the guilty go un- 
 punished. If God were not Love, then there might be no future 
 retribution of misery to the wicked. But justice only does the 
 work of Love, and Love works for the purity and blessedness of 
 the universe. Where there is sin, Love without wrath would only 
 be connivance with iniquity. 
 
 It is a fact therefore, that in your natural theology, sin being 
 given, pain is absolutely necessary, in order to prove the benevo- 
 lence of God. So that the problem and the answer might be 
 stated thus : Given, the fact of sin, how will you demonstrate 
 that God is a good being ? Answer : Only by proving that God 
 punishes sin. In this view, the misery with which earth is filled, 
 so far from being a difficulty in God's government, goes to esta- 
 blish it as God's. A malevolent being would have let men sin 
 without making them miserable ; therefore, God could not be 
 proved benevolent unless, in a world of sin, there were the in- 
 gredient of misery. 
 
 Then as to the other problem : Given, a race of sinful crea- 
 tures : What sort of a world shall they be placed in ? You 
 would certainly answer, Not a world of unmingled softness 
 and beauty, not a Paradise of enjoyment, not the early and un- 
 diseased Eden of innocence and love, but a world, in which there 
 shall be enough of storm and tempest, enough of painful climate, 
 
CHAP. XL.] CREATION AS A TEACHER. 187 
 
 and of the curse of barrenness, and of the element of disaster 
 and ruin, to show God's frown and evident curse for sin ; but 
 yet enough of the means of enjoyment, if rightly used, to draw 
 men to industry, to show God's kindness and love, and enough 
 of beauty and sublimity to impress, delight and educate the 
 soul. It is just a world so mingled, a world scarred with evil, 
 as well as bright with good, that we, a sinful race, do really 
 inhabit. 
 
 The view which men take of the argument for the goodness 
 of God from the works of creation will vary much according to 
 their own states of mind. A man suffering the consequences of 
 sin, or a man under a cloud of care, and destitute of faith, or a 
 man burdened with present miseries, without any consolation 
 from divine grace, would see things very differently from a calm 
 mind, a quiet mind, a happy mind, a mind at peace with God. 
 TJbeJUniyerse takes -its- coloring from the hue of our own souls ; 
 and.so, in a measure, does the solution of the question whether 
 the Universe, so far as we are acquainted with it, proves a God 
 of love. A heart that loves God, and rejoices in the happiness 
 that .fills the world around it, will say instinctively that it does, 
 and will sympathize with God in his own feelings of delight in 
 the happiness of creation. A misanthropic heart, a sinful heart, \ 
 a rebellious heart, will perhaps be disposed to say No, or will 
 overlook, and cannot understand and appreciate, the power of the t 
 argument. For a mind disposed to make difficulty, plenty of 
 difficulty exists. For a mind humbly disposed to learn of God, 
 there is confirmation of the soul's faith, even in difficulties them- 
 selves, which are as buttresses supporting the spire that sublimely 
 points to heaven. 
 
188 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLI. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Pass of the Splugen into Italy. The Cardinell and Macdonald's army. 
 Campo Dolcino and Chiavenna. 
 
 FROM the little wild village of Splugen, overhanging the young 
 Rhine-river, where there is an excellent mountain inn, having 
 supped, slept, and breakfasted, 4711 feet above the sea, you take 
 your departure at pleasure for either of the two Alpine passes into 
 Italy, the Splugen or the Bernardin. Both of them carry you across 
 scenes of the greatest wildness, winter, and sublimity, into almost 
 perpetual loveliness and summer. You pass the snowy recesses, 
 where Nature holds the nursling rivers to her bosom of glaciers, 
 feeding her infants with ice ; you go down into Elysian fields, 
 where the brooks sparkle and dance, like laughing children amidst 
 flowers and sunshine. The whirlwind of war has poured across 
 each of these passes, in the most terrific of the seasons, driven by 
 the French General Lecourbe at the Bernardin, and by Macdo- 
 nald at the perilous gorge of the Cardinell. They marched in 
 the midst of fierce tempests and falling avalanches, that swept 
 whole phalanxes as into the depths of hell, as if the avenging 
 genii of Switzerland were up in arms, the ministers of wrath 
 against the oppressor. The pass of the Splugen, rising more than 
 2000 feet above the village of Splugen, and 6814 above the sea, 
 brings you out at Chiavenna and the Lake of Como. That of 
 the Bernardin, rising 7115 feet above the sea, and about 2400 
 above Splugen, opens upon Bellinzona and the Lakes of Mag- 
 giore and Lugano. 
 
 We take the Splugen road, and following it through four miles 
 and three quarters of laborious ascent, come to the narrow moun- 
 tain ridge, which traces the boundary line between Switzerland 
 and Lombardy. The steepest ascent is effected by a great num- 
 ber of zigzags, so gradual, that they turn almost parallel on one 
 another. The pedestrian will do well to scale across them, as 
 
CHAP. XLL] PASS OF THE SPLUGEN. 189 
 
 one might cut a coil of rope across the centre, instead of running 
 round it ; and climbing from crag to crag, he will speedily see 
 his carriage and friends far below him, toiling slowly along, while 
 he himself seems to be mounting into heaven. The laborers 
 were at work upon the road above these zigzags, constructing a 
 tunnel or gallery for safety from the avalanches, so as to let them 
 shoot over the roof into the gulf below without harm to the pas- 
 sengers. But a man would not wish to be present either in the 
 tunnel or on the zigzags, when an avalanche thunders down. 
 One would suppose it would sweep gallery and all before it, tear- 
 ing a trench in the mountain, like the furrow of a cannon ball 
 across rough ground. 
 
 You reach the summit of the pass, the highest ridge, and as 
 usual there is little or no intermediate space, no debateable level, 
 but you descend as instantly, almost, as from one side of the steep 
 roof of a house to the other. The fierce wind cutting your face, 
 and sometimes blowing as if it would hurl you back bodily into 
 the inn at Splugen, or the thundering Rhine, tells you at once, 
 as well as the extreme cold, when you have reached the culmi- 
 nating point, for you get nothing of Italy here except an Aus- 
 trian bayonet, sharp and watchful as the ice-breeze. Perhaps 
 'you may have been expecting to meet the warm breath of the 
 South, and to look down from the peaks of winter into the ver- 
 dure of sunny Italian landscapes. As yet the Italian side is as 
 savage as the Swiss, and there is an element of gloom besides, 
 almost sensible in the air itself, and visible as a symbol, in the 
 awful desolation around you, grim despotism, vigilant, insolent, 
 remorseless. So pass on, if you please, and enter some of its 
 guard-houses, built as much like dread prisons as may be, and 
 where you feel as if in prison yourself, while your passport and 
 your baggage are under examination. How different this, from 
 the pleasant, hospitable reception on the Grand St. Bernard ! 
 
 The old road from this point passed through the terrific gorge 
 of the Cardinell, where Macdonald, at the will of Napoleon, un- 
 dertook a five days' fight with the rage of the elements. It was 
 winter and storm, but there was no retreating. He advanced with 
 his army in the face of a cannonade of avalanches, on the brink of 
 unfathomable abysses, where many a score of despairing men and 
 
190 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLI. 
 
 struggling horses, buffeted and blinded by the wings of the tempest, 
 and wrapped in a winding sheet of ice and snow, were launched off 
 by the crashing mountain masses, and buried for ever. Over this 
 gorge the avalanches hang balanced and brooding, so that a whis- 
 per may precipitate them. They have sometimes fallen like a 
 thunderbolt, and swept away one traveller, leaving another in 
 safety by his side. The mail carriers have seen their horses 
 shot into the abyss, not indeed from under them, but when they 
 had dismounted for an instant. It seems to be a pass shrouded 
 in more absolute terrors than any in Switzerland. 
 
 There are indeed more avalanches annually in this Canton of 
 the Grisons than in any other, and a greater number of lives lost 
 every year. There is no avoiding the peril, because no fore- 
 seeing when it may fall. A story is told, with all the evi- 
 dence of truth, of the whole village of Rueras in 1749 being 
 swept off by an avalanche so immense, taking such vast deep 
 masses of earth all at once, that the inmates in some of the houses 
 were not even awakened by the rush of the mountain, and when 
 they did awake buried, lay abed and wondered that the night was 
 so long ! Tired mountaineers sleep very soundly, but I do not 
 demand credit for this, though it is not absolutely incredible. 
 There are incidents enough, terrible and grand, and escapes 
 almost miraculous, which do not so tax faith's faculties. 
 
 In the passage of Macdonald's army through this frightful re- 
 gion, so far from being surprised at the number of men swept to 
 destruction, we only wonder that whole regiments were not buried 
 at once ; the amazement is, that passing in a winter's storm, with 
 avalanches repeatedly shooting through these columns, so large a 
 portion of the army escaped, not more than a hundred men, and 
 as many horses, being lost. One of the drummers of the army, 
 having been shot in a snow bank from the avalanche into the 
 frightful gulf, and baring struggled forth alive, but out of sight 
 and reach of his comrades, was heard beating his drum for hours 
 in the abyss, vainly expecting rescue. Poor fellow ! the roll of 
 his martial instrument had often roused his fellow soldiers with 
 fierce courage to the attack, but now it was his own funeral march 
 that he was beating, and it sounded like a death summons for the 
 whole army into this frightful Hades, if another avalanche should 
 
CHAP. XLI.] GORGE OF THE CARDINELL. 191 
 
 thunder down. There was no reaching him, and death with icy 
 fingers stilled the roll of the drum, and beat out the last pulsations 
 of hope and life in his bosom ! 
 
 Macdonald was struggling on to Marengo. The army suffered 
 more from fatigue and terror in the passage than in all their bat- 
 tles. Had they perished in the gorge of the Cardinell, the victory 
 at Marengo would perhaps have been changed into a defeat, which 
 itself might have changed the whole course of modern history. 
 What might not have been, had such and such things not been ! 
 and what mighty things might never have been, if such and such 
 things had been. Give me but the power to have put a pin where 
 I might choose, twice in the last forty years, and I could have re- 
 volutionized all Europe. IF, is a great word. How many at 
 this moment are saying, If i had but done so and so, or, if this 
 circumstance were only so, or, if I had but avoided doing so and 
 so ! Sometimes, ifs are fearful things, especially on a dying bed, 
 when they balance the soul between hell and heaven. One half 
 the sentence presents it at the gates of Paradise, the other thrusts 
 it through the portals of the world of wo. 
 
 We pass now above the village of Isola, with the deserted and 
 unused zigzags leading to it, which you overlook completely, as 
 if you could jump down upon the clustered houses. The labori- 
 ously constructed roads and great galleries tell you, if you are at 
 all sceptical, what dangers lie in wait from the avalanches, which 
 you find it difficult to conceive, when crossing the pass in the 
 depth of summer and in fine weather. A space of about three 
 thousand feet, where the avalanches roar across the passage every 
 year, and would plough up an open road like the wedge of the 
 descending pyramids of Dgizeh, is nearly covered with these 
 massive galleries, one of them 700 feet in length, a second 642 
 feet long, and a still longer gallery of 1530 feet by fifteen high 
 and wide. The solid smooth roofs slope outwards, and the travel- 
 ler beneath them, if he is there at a proper time, may hear above 
 him the sublime roar of the descending masses of ice and snow, 
 impetuously sweeping the roof and shooting into the gulf like a 
 tornado. 
 
 The road crosses the stream of the Medissimo, at the very verge 
 of the precipice, where the little river takes a sheer plunge, of 
 
192 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLI. 
 
 near 800 feet high, down into the vale of the Lira, making one 
 of the most truly magnificent cascades in all Switzerland. But 
 you should see it when the stream is well swollen with rains. 
 You command the whole fall from above ; you have also the most 
 admirable points of view sideways and half in front, as you wind 
 your way beyond the river down into the Vale, by the rocky zig- 
 zags turning and returning upon the scene. It is indescribably 
 beautiful. 
 
 If the day itself did not begin to be cloudy and severe, you 
 would have, even thus far up the mountains, a taste of the sweet 
 air of Italy, as well as an experience of its bitter, desolate and 
 dirty inns. Its golden delicious names begin to winnow the air 
 like winged words upon your ear at every step, and from the vil- 
 lage of Splugen, with its clattering consonants, and its comfortable, 
 excellent hotel, you pass to the village of Campo Dolcino, a paradi- 
 saical name, a dirty hamlet, and an execrable inn. This was the 
 Post inn, and here we had been promised a new carriage and 
 horses, not being able, on any condition, to persuade our obstinate 
 or faint-hearted young driver from Splugen to carry us in to Chi- 
 avenna. The governors of the stable at Campo Dolcino either 
 could not or would not provide us a voiture, whereupon, as we 
 would have ridden a rail rather than stay in this dram-drink- 
 ing, oath-swearing place over the sabbath (and it was now 
 Saturday evening) a peasant's hay cart, that stood in a melancholy 
 out-house, was harnessed, the postillions and horses of two 
 carriages that had just arrived on the way to Splugen were ap- 
 pended, and in this sumptuous style we set out for Chiavenna. 
 We came into Italy in the fog and rain, and into Chiavenna upon 
 the vertebrae of a cart, drawn by two horses, with six more fast- 
 ened behind, and three yellow and red-coated postillions on the 
 seat in front of us, with their brazen music-breaking horns of 
 office slung over their shoulders. 
 
 The pass down the valley is the very sublimity of desolation, 
 a chaos of huge blocks of rock from the surrounding mountains, 
 thrown and piled disorderly from age to age, in squares and 
 parallelograms, and now covered partially, and richly veiled, with 
 mosses and verdure. The rock is of a kind that reddens in the 
 air after long exposure, so that the color of the scene is dark and 
 
CHAP. XLI.] CHIAVENNA. 193 
 
 rich, and the many magnificent chestnut trees, with their thick, lux- 
 uriant foliage, amidst the precipices, along which the road winds 
 downwards, make the landscape most impressive for its solemnity 
 and beauty. Two or three miles before arriving at Chiavenna, 
 this narrow vale of Lira opens out into an expansive combination 
 of the lovely luxuriance of Italy with the grandeur of Switzer- 
 land \ glorious mountains broken into picturesque red crags, 
 embosomed in foliage, so thajt the sun, shining on them with the 
 slant golden light of setting day, turns them into jasper ; green 
 vineyards purpled with the luscious ripe grapes ; overshadowing 
 chestnuts, leafy figs, pomegranates, mulberries, almonds, and 
 everywhere the record of an inexhaustible life and fertility, in 
 the richest, most consummate vegetation. Here lies, romantically 
 situated, on the river Maira, at the mouth of the Val Bregaglia, 
 under the overawing mountains, the Italian town of Chiavenna. 
 
 You drive up to the Tnn Conradi, if you come genteelly and 
 properly into the town ; but we had to walk as if we had dropped 
 from the clouds, for our roguish postillions were afraid their 
 owners should see them with the peasant's hay-cart, and kindness 
 to them, as well as respect for ourselves, prevented us from 
 insisting that they should parade our queer establishment in the 
 great square, so we got out at a proper distance and threaded our 
 way to the hotel, leaving them to follow with our luggage. Hard 
 by the inn rises a most romantic ruined old castle, on the summit 
 of a grottoed cliff, and a few steps from it are the antique ecclesi- 
 astical structures of the town, among which the most singular are 
 a couple of human skeleton-houses, with grated doors, through 
 which you see piled innumerable skulls and cross-bones grinning 
 at you ' } an order of architecture more antique and solemn than 
 any other in the world. The priests are busy with their pro- 
 cessions, the bells are ringing, the world is singing, and the whole 
 population, especially of women, seem to be church choristers. 
 The two guardian genii of Italy are perpetually at work around 
 you, Music and Superstition. 
 
 PART n. 14 
 
194 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLII. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 The Buried Town of Pleurs. 
 
 
 
 THERE are in Chiavenna about three thousand people. The 
 great interest of the surrounding region is in the beauty of the 
 Valley of Bregaglia, above the town towards the pass of the Ma- 
 loggia, most grand and beautiful. About an hour's walk brings 
 you to a spot, which was to me one of the most interesting in all my 
 rambles, the spot where the village of Pleurs, with about twenty- 
 five hundred inhabitants, was overwhelmed in the year 1618, by 
 the falling of a mountain. This terrific avalanche took place in 
 the night, and was so sudden, complete, and overwhelming, that 
 not only every soul perished, but no trace whatever of the village 
 or of any of the remains of the inhabitants could afterwards be 
 discovered. The mountain must have buried the town to the 
 depth of several hundred feet. Though the all-veiling gentleness 
 of nature has covered both the mountain that stood, and that 
 which fell, with luxuriant vegetation, and even a forest of chest- 
 nuts has grown amidst the wilderness of the rocks, yet the vast- 
 ness and the wreck of the avalanche are clearly distinguishable. 
 Enormous angular blocks of rocks are strewn and piled in the 
 wfldest confusion possible, some of them being at least sixty feet 
 high. The soil has so accumulated in the space of two hundred 
 years, that on the surface of these ruins there are smooth, grassy 
 fields at intervals, and the chestnuts grow everywhere. A few 
 clusters of miserable hamlets, like Indians' or gipsies' wigwams, 
 are also scattered over the grave of the former village, and there 
 is a forlorn looking chapel that might serve as a convent for 
 banditti. The mountains rise on either side to a great height in 
 most picturesque peaks and outlines, and the valley is filled up 
 with a snowy range at the north. 
 
 On this spot I read with great pleasure the Benedicite in 
 the Book of Common Prayer, which my friend lent me. O ye 
 
CHAP. XLII.] THE BURIED CITY. 195 
 
 mountains and all hills, praise the Lord ! There is but one verse 
 in it inconsistent with the sublimity of the whole, and that is the 
 appeal to Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, which is as if the bel- 
 lows of an organ had burst in the middle of an anthem ; he that 
 can tell me what it means, will have more knowledge than any 
 man I have yet encountered. My friend, though an English 
 Clergyman, could not solve the problem. O Ananias, Azarias, 
 and Misael, praise ye the Lord ! Who are, or were, these peo- 
 ple, or are they saints or angels, or how came their names in the 
 Benedicite ? The Romish Missal, from which it was doubtless 
 copied, may perhaps tell. 
 
 On the other side of the Maira, one of the most beautiful cas- 
 cades in the world was falling from the mountains. There are 
 four falls, close upon the foam of one another, two higher up, and 
 two lower down. Seen against the setting sun, nothing could be 
 more beautiful. Always falling, always falling, only beautiful 
 by falling and being lost ! Yet not lost, for all streams reach the 
 sea, and so it is an emblem of those acts of faith and self-sacrifice, 
 in which men lose their lives and find them, making as it were a 
 perilous loss, for the kingdom of heaven, which is admired of 
 the world, and rewarded in God for ever. 
 
 It was a solemn thing to stand upon the tomb of twenty-five 
 hundred beings, all sepulchred alive. No efforts have ever dis- 
 covered a trace of the inhabitants, not a bone, not a vestige. The 
 mountain that covers them shall be thrown off at the resurrection, 
 but never before. It was the Mount Conto that fell ; the half 
 that was left behind still rises abrupt and perpendicular over the 
 mighty grave. It is singular enough that the town was situated 
 itself on the tomb of another village, which had previously been 
 overwhelmed by a similar catastrophe. For that reason it was 
 named Pleurs, The Town of Tears. From the times of old, as 
 often as in Italy one city has been buried, another has been built 
 upon the very same spot, except indeed in the case of Pompeii, so 
 that it is no uncommon thing for the same earth to be leased to 
 the dead and the living. 
 
 The Town of Tears was one of the gayest, richest, laughing, 
 pleasure-loving, joyous little cities in the kingdom. It might 
 have been named Tears because it had laughed till it cried. It 
 
196 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLII. 
 
 had palaces and villas of rich gentlemen and nobles ; for its 
 lovely, romantic situation, and pleasant air, attracted the wealthy 
 families to spend especially the summer months in so delightful a 
 retreat. I wonder that no poet or romance- writer has made this 
 scene the subject of a thrilling story. The day before the lid of 
 their vast sepulchre fell, the people were as happy and secure as those 
 of Pompeii, the night of the Vesuvian eruption and much more 
 innocent. There had been great rains. Vast masses of gravel were 
 loosened from the mountains, and overwhelmed some rich vineyards. 
 The herdsmen came hurrying in to give notice that strange move- 
 ments had been taking place, with alarming symptoms of some great 
 convulsion ; that there were great fissures and rents forming in the 
 mountain, and masses of rock falling, just as the cornice of a build- 
 ing might topple down in fragments, before the whole wall tum- 
 bles. The cattle were seized with terror, and probably perceiving 
 the trembling of the ground beneath their feet, fled bellowing 
 from the region. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was no dream of what was to follow. The 
 storm cleared brightly away, the sun rose and set on the fourth 
 of September, as a bridegroom ; the people lay down securely to 
 rest, or pursued their accustomed festivities into the bosom of the 
 night, with the plans for to-morrow ; but that night the mountain 
 fell and destroyed them all. At midnight a great roar was heard 
 far over the country, and a shock felt as of an earthquake, and 
 then a solemn stillness followed ; in the morning a cloud of dust 
 and vapor hung over the valley, and the bed of the Maira was 
 dry. The river had been stopped by the falling of the mountain 
 across its channel, and the town of Pleurs with the village of Celano 
 had disappeared for ever. All the excavations of all the laborers that 
 could be collected, failed to discover a single vestige of the inhabit- 
 ants or of their dwelling-places. The miners could not reach the 
 cathedral for its gold and jewels, and there they lie at rest, 
 churches and palaces, villas and hovels, priests, peasants, and 
 nobles, where neither gold, nor love, nor superstition, nor piety, 
 can raise them from their graves, or have any power over them. 
 
 How many a tale this green and rocky mound doth tell of ex- 
 pectations blasted, of plans suddenly broken, of domestic trage- 
 dies and comedies interrupted in the midst ; of pleasure and 
 
CHAP. XLII.] LESSONS OF DEATH. 197 
 
 prayer, of loss and gain, of poverty and wealth, of sickness and 
 health, all overtaken at once ; the dying and the living cut off 
 together, their death and burial being one and the same. They 
 did eat, they drank, they were marrying and giving in marriage, 
 as in the day when Noah entered into the ark. The gate of the 
 Eternal World received a crowd of spirits ; but that gate is al- 
 ways crowded, for the stream of life is not more full and uninter- 
 rupted on earth, than it is deep and ceaseless in its passage out of 
 Time into Eternity. And not a man in all this tide of unbroken 
 life (for dying is not ceasing to live but living anew), knows the 
 hour of his destiny, though the tide is as immutable, as fixed, .as 
 regular, as the laws of the Universe, as Eternity itself. There- 
 fore, sudden deaths, deaths by tempests, by avalanches, by " the 
 all dreaded thunder-stroke," deaths at a word, and deaths without 
 detected cause, in the midst of health, deaths like the burning of 
 a forest, and deaths like the dropping of the autumn leaves, all 
 have their place calmly and quietly in this tide of life, and as 
 little interrupt or agitate its flow, as the ripples that die beneath 
 the weary worn out winds upon its surface. 
 
 Almost as fixed as the certainty of death, and the uncertainty 
 of the time of death, is the habit of procrastination in preparing 
 for death. Men still reckon on time, amidst all warnings, and on 
 a better time. " The lying spirit," remarks John Foster, " which 
 had promised to meet them at the assigned spot, to conduct them 
 thenceforward towards heaven, appears not on the ground when 
 they arrive there, unless to tell them that another stage, still fur- 
 ther on, will be more advantageous for commencing the enter- 
 prise." Youth, especially, deems it not probable that life will 
 terminate in youth. And yet, many die young, and vanish as 
 suddenly as a broken dream, so that there is no reliance to be 
 placed even on the most favorable account of probabilities. 
 
 " And," says Foster, with that thoughtful and imperative so- 
 lemnity, for which his sentences are often so remarkable, " a few 
 examples, or even one, of the treacherousness of the calcu- 
 lation, should suffice to warn you not to hazard anything of great 
 moment on so menacing an uncertainty. For, in all reason, 
 when an infinitely important interest is depending, a mere possi- 
 bility that your allotment may prove to be like theirs, is to be held 
 
198 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLII. 
 
 of far greater weight on the one side, than the alleged probability 
 of the contrary is on the other. The possibility of dying impre- 
 pared, takes all the value from even the highest probability that 
 there will be prolonged time to prepare : plainly, because there 
 is no proportion between the fearfulness of such a hazard, and the 
 precariousness of such a dependence. So that one day of the 
 certain hazard may be safely asserted to be a greater thing against 
 you, than whole imaginary years promised you-by the probability, 
 ought to be accounted of value for you." 
 
 Many a man is brought to the gates of death, and even of sud- 
 den death, and yet forgets it at once, so soon as he is brought back 
 again. How beautiful is that old ode of Mason expressing a bet- 
 ter purpose in a like deliverance. 
 
 Methought Death laid his hands on me, 
 
 And did his prisoner bind ; 
 And by the sound, methought I heard 
 
 His Master's feet behind. 
 Methought I stood upon the shore, 
 
 And nothing could I see, 
 But the vast ocean, with my eyes, 
 
 A vast Eternity ! 
 
 Methought I heard the midnight cry, 
 
 Behold the Bridegroom comes ! 
 Methought I was called to the bar, 
 
 Where souls receive their dooms. 
 The world was at an end to me, 
 
 As if it all did burn : 
 But lo ! there came a voice from heaven, 
 
 Which ordered my return. 
 
 Lord, I returned at thy command, 
 
 What wilt thou have me do ? 
 O let me wholly live to Thee, 
 
 To whom my life I owe ! 
 Fain would I dedicate to Thee 
 
 The remnant of my days : 
 Lord, with my life renew my heart, 
 
 That both thy name may praise. 
 
CHAP. XLIII.] LAKE OF COMO. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 Beauty of the Lake of Como. Como to Milan. Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 How strange it is that the beauty of Italy is so mingled with de- 
 cay and death ! Between Chiavenna and the Lake of Como, if 
 you stop anywhere by night, you do it at your peril. The 
 malaria fever lies in ambush where the mountain streams from 
 the Val Bregaglia, the vale of Lira, and the Valteline, have 
 slowly intruded their marshy shoals in plains that may of old 
 have been covered by the Lake of Como. We started from 
 Chiavenna, through this desolate region, early in the morning by 
 the diligence, and in a few hours arrived at Colico on the Lake, 
 for the purpose of embarking in the steamer, that daily about 
 noon departs for Como. You bid adieu to the companionship of 
 mountains, that have so long been personal friends, with great 
 regret, though you are launched upon one of the most beautiful 
 water-scenes in the world, and one of the grandest also ; for the 
 mountains that invest the Lake of Como give it an air of sub- 
 limity and grandeur as impressive as its beauty is attractive. It 
 is about forty miles in length, bordered by a mountain landscape 
 of perpetual richness, magnificence, and beauty. But let no 
 man, who has leisure to explore its beauties, cross it in a steamer. 
 There are row-boats and sail-boats, and you should take a day 
 or two with a dear friend, or in quiet solitude, to run into its 
 nooks, its enclosures, to land at its picturesque cliffs and recesses, 
 and to watch the clouds, the rocks, and the foliage reflected in its 
 bosom, with nothing but the dipping oar to break its silence, or 
 ruffle its smoothness. There is great enjoyment in such a sail, 
 and it is only thus that you can become acquainted with the ge- 
 nius loci, the soul and spirit of the lake and the landscape. 
 
 At the town of Como you feel that you are in Italy, and how 
 vast the change from the mountains of Switzerland to this sunny 
 
200 
 
 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLIII. 
 
 clime ! We were in haste to reach Milan, and there being no- 
 thing to detain us at Como, we secured the only two remaining 
 seats in the diligence, and passed on. A tree fell directly across 
 the road in one part of our way, and falling between the horses 
 and the carriage, stopped us completely, so that the laborers were 
 obliged to cut through the tree on both sides of the road, before 
 we could be extricated. Besides this, we were delayed by an 
 angry altercation between our conductor and an English coach- 
 man, with whom he got into a squabble, raising the whole popu- 
 lace, together with the officers of justice, in a little village on the 
 road. Such a clatter and storm of fierce words and furious ges- 
 ticulations would have been rare to meet anywhere else out of 
 Bedlam ; but after all, we arrived safe, though late, the same 
 evening at Milan. 
 
 How heavenly the enchantment which, from the Italian side, 
 distance lends to the mountains of Switzerland ! Every step we 
 departed from them seemed to render the view more beautiful. 
 They began to appear like another world floating in mid-heaven ; 
 it was as if we were coasting a neighboring planet, battlemented 
 and turreted with crags of diamond, and divided, from us by fields 
 of cerulean space. Meantime, the open country, through which 
 we are travelling, is full of luxuriance. One can never forget 
 the transcendent glory of the horizon, with the evening sun 
 against it. It is the picture drawn by Milton, but reduplicated 
 in broad space in the heavens. 
 
 " Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where heaven 
 With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun 
 Slowly descended ; and with right aspect 
 Against the eastern gate of Paradise 
 Levelled his evening rays : it was a rock 
 Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds, 
 Conspicuous far." 
 
 The day shuts upon such scenery, just as the thickening tho- 
 roughfares, the passing and repassing peasantry, with wains and 
 donkey- wagons, and the glimmering of suburban lights, tell you 
 that you are nearing a great city. At length you drive under 
 its proud arches, and in the strange romance that surrounds you, 
 
CHAP. xLiii.] SIGHTS IN MILAN. 201 
 
 on first being set down at dusk among new ranges of buildings 
 and faces, as in the transitions of a dream, you wait for the ex- 
 amination of your passports. That done, you drive on again 
 through streets, now deserted and murky, and now gay and 
 crowded, into the well lighted centres of evening life and activity ; 
 perhaps you are whirled past the blaze of the great theatre. 
 What creature in all the crowd cares for you, or knows of your 
 existence ? You are as a water-drop falling into a great river. 
 But you need not fear you are to be carefully sponged up and 
 preserved separate. There is now a watch over you, on earth 
 as well as in heaven. 
 
 But if you find as much difficulty in getting lodgings as we 
 did, you will begin to wish you had stayed away from Italy. It 
 was past midnight before we found any other shelter than the 
 ante-room of the post-house, for the city was literally crammed 
 with strangers ; but we did at length, by dint of runners, discover 
 a fine range of rooms over a common pot-house, where we estab- 
 lished ourselves very pleasantly. A fine range of rooms over a 
 common pot-house, and established pleasantly ! What ! and de- 
 cently also ? Yes, and far more respectably and comfortably, 
 than just at that time we could have been at any of the crowded 
 hotels at which we applied in vain for entrance. The juxta-posi- 
 tion of the extremes of refinement and of low life is no uncom- 
 mon thing in these countries. You may have luxury and quiet, 
 unsuspected and unenvied, far enough away from palaces. It 
 was amusing to us to see the goings on of life -in the tavern below 
 our suite of apartments. The common people seemed to enjoy 
 themselves as freely and heartily, as if they were eating and 
 drinking in an atmosphere of genuine liberty. But no man can 
 forget that the quiet here is maintained by Austrian bayonets. 
 
 Milan is one of the first cities in Italy, though there is not so 
 much of curious and beautiful sight-seeing as in Florence or Na- 
 ples, nor so fine a climate, neither a volcano with Pompeii at its 
 feet, nor a splendid bay in the Mediterranean. It is more health- 
 ful than many places in the kingdom. One might find many 
 things of the deepest interest to say of its legendary history, but 
 we cannot dwell upon this, nor upon the statistical province of 
 the guide books. I had visited Milan some years before, but had 
 
202 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLIII. 
 
 entered it in the rain, stayed in it through the rain, and passed 
 from it in a rain-storm ; circumstances not the most favorable 
 for seeing a fine city. Almost the only thing I remembered 
 was its white glittering Cathedral, and its college of fine old 
 paintings, the College of Brera. 
 
 Then there is the dim shadowy spectre of Leonardo da Vinci's 
 great painting of the Last Supper. No man would visit it, if it 
 were not for what it had been ; it is like visiting the house in 
 which Shakspeare lived, or the room in which Milton died ; the 
 occupant is gone. In looking at the picture, you find yourself 
 gazing not so much at what is there, but endeavoring to see what 
 is not there. It is as if one led you to a dim room filled with 
 apparitions, some ante-chamber to the land of shades, and you 
 should vainly strain your sight for some known image, but you 
 only see 
 
 " the shadowy forms 
 
 That seem things dead, and dead again." 
 
 Sixteen years did the Artist labor upon this painting with slow 
 and patient toil, the fruit of intense contemplation. He was one 
 of the most universal and commanding geniuses of Italy, and 
 doubtless the painting was in all respects the most perfect the 
 world ever saw. It would have matched the Transfiguration by 
 Raphael, had it been painted on canvas, in undecaying colors. 
 But one half century and a little more, sufficed, by various acci- 
 dents and exposure, for its almost complete destruction ; and by 
 so many hands has it been retouched, mended and painted anew, 
 that it would probably be impossible for the most consummate 
 judge of art to find in it a trace of the pencil of the original 
 author. 
 
CHAP. XMV.] CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 203 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 The Cathedral of Milan. The Gospel in Italy. 
 
 You have Nature in Switzerland and Art in Italy. The tran- 
 sition is great from cloud and snow-capped mountains and thun- 
 dering waterfalls, to the ribbed chapels and aisles of cathedrals, 
 with saints and angels sculptured upon slender spires, and the 
 organ solemnly pealing. The Duomo of Milan is the first full 
 introduction for the stranger from the North into the Ecclesiastical 
 splendors of a past artistic world. From great mountains to some 
 gigantic supernatural structure, like the colossal Temple of Kar- 
 nak in Thebes, would be a change more fitting to the feelings ; 
 but coming from the cities or the plains of Lombardy, the sight 
 of the architectural pile at Milan is truly imposing and majestic. 
 
 The Cathedral is claimed by the Milanese as the eighth won- 
 der of the world. It rises in the very heart of the city, a mag- 
 nificent broad pile of white marble, sculptured and entablatured 
 on the face and sides with groups of statuary, and pinnacled at 
 every angle and corner with lofty and delicate spires, which bear 
 upon their summits each a majestic statue of white marble. One 
 hundred and sixteen of these spires are visible at once, and the 
 sculptured forms springing from their slender extremities look as 
 if suspended in the air by magic. The great tower of the Cathe- 
 dral is an almost interminable labyrinth of marble statuary and 
 tracery at so great height, and so light and delicate, that it seems 
 as if the first strong wind would prostrate the whole, or scatter 
 its rocky lace- work like leaves in autumn. 
 
 If you can conceive of a river of liquid white marble shot into 
 the air to the height of five hundred feet, and then suddenly petri- 
 fied while falling, you will come to some approximation of the 
 beauty and rareness of this magnificent vision. It seems like a 
 petrified oriental dream, and if it had stood in Venice, opposite 
 
204 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xi.iv. 
 
 St. Mark's Church and the Doge's Palace, it would have been 
 more in keeping. There is a broad, ample, open space in front 
 of it, so that you command a full satisfactory view from a suffi- 
 cient distance, uninterrupted. The first time I saw it, I came 
 upon it suddenly and unexpectedly, on turning a corner in the 
 street, as if it had sprung from the earth before me like an exha- 
 lation, and it instantly reminded me, with its multitudinous white 
 spires and images, of the very imaginative reference to it by 
 Wordsworth in his poem on an eclipse of the Sun. This is one 
 of the most exquisitely beautiful compositions in all the volumes 
 of this great Poet, and the measure in which it is written is 
 most melodious and perfect. 
 
 But Fancy, with the speed of fire, 
 Hath fled to Milan's loftiest spire, 
 And there alights, mid that aerial host 
 Of figures human and divine, 
 White as the snows of Appenine 
 Indurated by frost. 
 ij 
 
 Awe-stricken she beholds the array 
 
 That guards the Temple night and day ; 
 
 Angels she sees, that might from heaven have flown ; 
 
 And Virgin Saints, who not in vain 
 
 Have striven by purity to gain 
 
 The beatific crown. 
 
 Far-stretching files, concentric rings, 
 Each narrowing above each ; the wings, 
 The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips, 
 The starry zone of sovereign height, 
 All steeped in this portentous light, 
 All suffering dim eclipse. 
 
 Look now abroad at evening from this starry zone, over the 
 horizon around you. The sun is sinking towards the Mediterra- 
 nean, and the long snowy ranges of the Alps on one side, and 
 the Appenines on the other, are burning with almost crimson ra- 
 diance. The City and the vast luxuriant plains lie beneath you. 
 Can the human imagination conceive a sight more glorious, than 
 those distant flashing mountains, ascending pile after pile, chain 
 behind chain, whiter and more brilliant into the heavens 1 How 
 
CHAP. XLIV.] CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 205 
 
 immense and magnificent the ranges commanded from this centre ! 
 From this pinnacle of art in Italy could we fly " with the speed 
 of fire" to that of nature on Mont Blanc, it seems as if the change 
 from Time into Eternity would hardly be greater. Yet it is little 
 more than three days since we were in the midst of those snows, 
 that in this getting sun blaze like the walls of heaven. And now 
 we long to be there again. The sight of such mountains makes 
 the Cathedral dwindle, makes you feel as if, while Art can indeed 
 be beautiful, there is nothing but Nature that can be truly sublime. 
 
 Now we turn again upon the marble tower, along its wilder- 
 ness of spires and statues. How admirably the sculptures are 
 finished ! Half way up the grand spire, you have the best view 
 of them, more than four thousand in all, though not all at once 
 visible. The immense size of the building, and its innumerable 
 recesses, admit of their distribution in such a way, that you would 
 not dream there were more than five hundred in all. 
 
 The structure is indeed a master-piece of gorgeous art, and in 
 speaking of it Wordsworth observes that " the selection and ar- 
 rangements of the figures are exquisitely fitted to support the re- 
 ligion of the country in the imaginations and feelings of the spec- 
 tator." But does the piety of the people, does the religion of the 
 Cross, as well as the religion of the country, increase and 
 strengthen by the beauty of such gorgeous churches ? It has 
 been remarked that the age of great architectural splendor in 
 churches is also an age of decline in spiritual worship. The 
 beauty and glory of the form are far more considered than the 
 indwelling spirit. Take Wordsworth's words as a definition, and 
 call the Romish Cathedral a series of figures selected and arranged 
 to support the religion of the country, and you have a most accu- 
 rate description. Whether the satire were intended, or the writer 
 was unconscious of it, makes but little difference. It is the reli- 
 gio loci, and not the preaching of the gospel, for which these great 
 edifices were destined ; it is the half paganized system of super- 
 stition, instead of the gospel, for which they are best adapted. 
 
 This magnificent pile, when Lanfranc undertook to rebuild it, 
 was styled a Church for the Mother of God, and on her account 
 the people brought their offerings. Then afterwards did the fierce 
 Galeazzo Visconti take up the work of rebuilding, in order to ex- 
 
206 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP, xnv 
 
 piate his great crimes. Then another uneasy sinner, on his death- 
 bed, paid, for the same purpose, the enormous expiatory gift of 
 280,000 crowns. After all this, Napoleon took up the work, as a 
 matter of imperial taste, splendor, and ambition, and nearly fin- 
 ished it. So, though it has been centuries in building, no man 
 can be said to have put a stone in it out of love ; it is all the work 
 not of Faith, but of Superstition ; so that, instead of regarding 
 these Gothic architectural piles as the consequence or proof of a 
 sense of religion in the Middle Ages, or as the natural growth or 
 expression of a devout spirit, they must rather be considered as 
 the price paid by an age of superstition, for a vast insurance on 
 the world to come. It is not the gospel in a believing heart, but 
 the Law acting on a guilty conscience, that has reared such struc- 
 tures. So, though some of them are a great material Epic, full 
 of beauty and grandeur, yet they cannot be considered as a true 
 product of the gospel, or of a simple religious spirit, any more 
 than the Iliad of Homer itself. 
 
 If they were religious edifices, then ought the ceremonies of 
 religion in them to be of such august simplicity and grandeur, so 
 free from mere human artifice, so superior to all superstition, so 
 shaped and imbued by the spirit of the gospel, that every man on 
 entering might feel irresistibly that it is the gospel. But, as 
 Wordsworth says, it is the religion of the country. You are made 
 to feel that while there is a great deal of worship in the Roman 
 Catholic religion, there is very little religion in the Roman Catho- 
 lic worship. You are compelled to make this distinction, by obser- 
 ving the round of superstitious ceremonies, and studying the crowds 
 kneeling before the multitudinous altars, pictures, effigies and 
 images. 
 
 As to the effect of the gospel of Christ, preached simply, plain- 
 ly, boldly, fervently, amidst all this power of superstition, I believe 
 it would be irresistible. The hearts of the Italians are human 
 hearts, as good naturally, as any other hearts in the world, and 
 perfectly accessible. Doubtless God will yet raise up native 
 preachers of the Cross among them, who will be as successful as 
 Paul ever was at Rome. He whose grace kindles the fire in such 
 hearts can keep it burning, can make it spread like the summer 
 lightning from cloud to cloud. No conclave of Inquisitors can stop 
 
CHAP. XLIV.] THE WORK OF GOD IN ITALY. 207 
 
 it, no persecution can put it out. The word of God shall " yet 
 have free course and be glorified" in Italy, and when it does, then 
 will that Man of Sin, that Son of Perdition (and I leave it with 
 my readers according to their own pleasure to say who or what 
 he is) be consumed by the Spirit of the Lord's mouth, and destroyed 
 by the brightness of his coming. 
 
 ' "- 
 
 
208 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLV. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 Silvio Pellico, and the Bible in Italy. 
 
 MILAN was the city of one of Silvio Pellico's prisons. What a 
 touching account he gives of the power of the Bible over him ! 
 The time is hastening, when it shall no longer be a strange book 
 in Italy, nor its doctrines hidden. For six or seven days Silvio had 
 been in a state of doubt, prayerlessness, and almost desperation. 
 Yet he sang with a pretended merriment, and sought to amuse 
 himself with foolish pleasantries. " My Bible," he says, " was 
 covered with dust. One of the children of the jailor said to me 
 one day, while caressing me, ' Since you have left off reading in 
 that villain of a book, it seems to me you are not so sad as before.' ' 
 Silvio had been putting on a forced gaiety. 
 
 " It seems to you ?" said he. 
 
 " I took my Bible, brushed away the dust with a pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, and opening it at hazard, my eyes fell upon these words. 
 ' And he said to his disciples, It is impossible but that offences 
 will come, but wo to that man by whom the offence cometh. It 
 were better for him that a millstone were cast about his neck, and 
 he thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these lit- 
 tle ones.' 
 
 " Struck with meeting these words, I was ashamed that this lit- 
 tle child should have perceived, by the dust with which my Bible 
 was covered, that I read it no more, and that he should have sup- 
 posed that I had become more sociable and pleasant by forgetting 
 God. I was completely desolate at having so scandalized him. 
 You little rogue, said I, with a caressing reproof, this is not a vil- 
 lain book, and during the several days that I have neglected to 
 read in it, I am become much worse. My singing that you have 
 heard is only a force-put, and my ill humor, which I try to drive 
 
CHAP. XLV.] SILVIO PELLICO AND HIS BIBLE. 209 
 
 away when your mother lets you in to see me, all comes back 
 when I am alone. 
 
 " The little child went out, and I experienced a degree of satis- 
 faction at having got my Bible again in my hands, and at having 
 confessed that without it I had grown worse. It seemed as if I 
 were making some reparation to a generous friend, whom I had 
 unjustly offended, and that I was again reconciled to him. 
 
 " And I had abandoned thee, O my God ! cried I, and I was 
 perverted ! and I could even believe that the infamous laugh of 
 the cynic and sceptic was suited to my despairing condition ! 
 
 " I pronounced these words with indescribable emotion. I 
 placed my Bible on a chair, I kneeled down upon the earth to read 
 it, and I, who weep with so much difficulty, burst into tears. 
 
 " These tears were a thousand times sweeter than my brutish 
 joy. I saw my God again ! I loved him ! I repented that I had 
 so insulted him in degrading myself, and I promised never more 
 to be separated from him, never. How does a sincere return to 
 the path of duty comfort and elevate the soul ! 
 
 " I read and wept and lamented during more than an hour, and 
 arose full of confidence in the thought that God was with me, and 
 that he had pardoned my delirium. Then my misfortunes, the 
 torments of the trial, the probability of the torture, appeared to me 
 a very little thing. I could rejoice in suffering, since I might ful- 
 fil a sacred duty, which was to obey the Saviour, in suffering with 
 resignation." 
 
 There are still hearts like Silvio Pellico's in Italy, and when the 
 word of God comes to this people, it will have all the greater power 
 for having been so long kept from them. When the spirit of the 
 mouth of the Lord kindles the fire, it will spread among Italian 
 hearts like a flame in the dry grass of the prairies. Under this 
 fire the superstitions of Romanism would perish. The Idolatry 
 of forms can no more stand against the burning spirit of God's 
 word, than the seared leaves and withered branches of the woods 
 in autumn could stand before a forest conflagration. 
 
 Frank-hearted Silvio Pellico ! How many a man has let the 
 dust grow thick upon his Bible, not in prison merely, but even his 
 family Bible, even with dear children around him, and never con- 
 fessed his sin, never gone back with tears of contrition to that Holy 
 
 PART n. 15 
 
210 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLV. 
 
 Book, nor taught it in his household, nor had the light of Truth Di- 
 vine, the light from Heaven shining on it ! How like a dungeon 
 with false and foul thoughts, must every heart be, out of which 
 God and the dear light of his word are excluded ! Yea, though 
 there may be laughter there, it is like poor Silvio's false and 
 forced despairing merriment, it is like the crackling of thorns un- 
 der a pot. Heavy laws are upon such a man, and when friends 
 depart, and he sees himself in prison, sees how he is in prison, 
 even though he walks in the open air, then there is desolation in- 
 deed. 
 
 "If there be one who need bemoan 
 His kindred laid in earth, 
 The household hearts that were his own, 
 It is the man of mirth." 
 
 
CHAP. XLVI.] SWISS FREEDOM. 211 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 The Farewell. Swiss character and freedom. 
 
 WE are no longer under the Shadow of the Jungfrau, and there- 
 fore it is high time that I close this second fasciculus of the 
 leaves of our pilgrimage. I might have extended it into the 
 Cottian Alps, amidst the interesting Churches of the Waldenses, 
 but such a ramble ought not to come at the end of a volume. 
 We will stop at Milan, in full sight of .the glorious Alps, among 
 which we have been wandering. From a splendid spire in the 
 midst of a region of despotism, we are gazing across upon the 
 mountain shrines of liberty. My readers will listen with pleas- 
 ure to the parting reflections of a young and gifted English lady 
 in regard to the Swiss character, the Swiss freedom, and in spite 
 of all disastrous omens, the hopes of Switzerland, and of the 
 hearty friends of that glorious country, for future, settled, perma- 
 nent, well-ordered LIBERTY. 
 
 " You are not to suppose," says Miss Lamont, in her interest- 
 ing volume of letters on France and Switzerland, " that I have 
 taken up my opinions about the Swiss from occasional gleanings 
 by the eye and ear, as I went along. I got a history of Switzer- 
 land to read, since I have been here ; not, indeed, so extended a 
 history as I should like on such a subject, yet it still helped me a 
 little. At first, I did not like it much it seemed to me nothing 
 better than war after war of tribes of red Indians. It improved 
 towards the last, yet still was but a detail of battles, year after 
 year, of the people against the nobles ; this can only interest 
 when the characters of individual leaders are portrayed it does 
 not do so in masses. However, I was glad to have, even from 
 that history, a reason for the faith that was in me respecting the 
 obstinate prowess of the Swiss, and their honest love of indepen- 
 dence. And, had I wanted anything to confirm me in the love 
 
212 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLVI. 
 
 of freedom which, untaught by any one, has become an essential 
 portion of my mind, I should have found it in my Swiss book, and 
 my Swiss journey. Not that there is here a more advanced 
 social state than in any other country of Europe, nor a greater 
 progress in science, the arts, and education ; but there is what is 
 a hundred-fold better there is a general diffusion of substantial 
 happiness, so to speak. After all, is it not disheartening to look 
 over the map of Europe, and behold only this one spot on which 
 liberty is to be found ? And what, though it was brought forth 
 amidst the contests of barbarian hordes, and baptized, re-baptized, 
 and baptized again on battle-fields reeking with blood, it is liberty; 
 and if the Swiss be but true to themselves, and permit this child 
 of theirs to grow to its full stature, it may become a guide to the 
 nations ! Yet, disheartening as it is, to see but one free land, it 
 is more so to reflect that ages must roll on before others can be 
 free ; for the more we know of the state of Europe, it becomes 
 the more evident that the chains which have been centuries in 
 forming, it will take centuries to break effectually. Look at Ger- 
 many, bound down by emperor, king, prince, duke, and noble of 
 every kind, each bond so weak in itself, yet all so impossible to 
 rend ! Look at Russia, where the barbaric forms of the undisguis- 
 ed despotisms of the East are adding to themselves the astuteness 
 of modern tyrannies. Look at England, where the despotism of 
 castes, a social despotism exists, of even a worse sort than that of 
 a tyrannical monarch ; and in France, where the contending ele- 
 ments of social corruption raised so terrific a storm, there is little 
 hope of the speedy establishment of liberty. Let the Swiss bless 
 their mountains, crags, and torrents, which, making their men 
 hardy in body, made them incapable of being trodden into slaves ; 
 made them able to renew the battle from year to year, from age 
 to age, until all has been gained! and, now, let them dread the 
 love of gain ; they could be courageous and virtuous, being poor; 
 I distrust them if they shall become rich ! Here is declamation 
 enough, you will say ; but I know you hope with me, that now 
 that they have gained all they desired, they will proceed in 
 the march of improvement. They have bought their freedom by 
 six hundred years of contest and bloodshed (not too high a price 
 for what is immortal worth), and now they have to do something 
 
 
CHAP. XLVI.] SWISS FREEDOM. 213 
 
 more difficult than what they have done, they have to use their 
 freedom wisely. They have to make it the guide, the aid, to 
 piety, humanity, liberality, knowledge ; if wealth if power, be 
 what it inspire them to seek, their freedom will slide from their 
 hold, when the nations now so far behind them have attained it." 
 
 But more than all this, what Switzerland needs to make the 
 country a centre of light and hope in all Europe, is true Re- 
 ligious Liberty. God grant there may be no more conflicts of 
 armed men about religion. There can be none, when the question 
 of a man's creed and clergyman is once totally separated from 
 the question of his civil and political obligations and duties, and 
 made the business solely between his conscience and his God. 
 The choice of one's church is a civil right, in which all that any 
 government has to do, is to protect the subject in its unmolested 
 enjoyment. It is also a religious obligation, but an obligation to- 
 wards God, with which no government on earth has any right to 
 interfere. Every man has a right to the protection of the civil 
 government in the performance of his religious duties ; no govern- 
 ment has any right to prescribe or enforce those duties. When 
 the State attempts to stand in the place of God, and to legislate 
 for the church, it becomes a despotism ; when the church attempts 
 to use the state for the enforcement of its own edicts, and the sup- 
 port of its establishments, it also becomes a despotism ; but where 
 the spirit of the Lord is, there is LIBERTY. 
 
 Farewell, now, to Alpine nature, that world of such glorious 
 images and thoughts ! He who has visited it with a wakeful 
 soul, and felt the steadfast eye of its great mountains upon him, 
 whether beneath the glittering sun, or the mild melancholy moon, 
 whether at day-dawn or in the flush of sunset, and seen the rush 
 of its white Avalanches, and heard their thunder, and the billows 
 of its glaciers, with the invulnerable life and far-ofF roar and fury 
 of their cataracts, and the living flowers that enamel the valleys 
 and skirt the eternal frosts, has a book of glory in his heart, 
 where, in the words of Dante, Memory mocks the toil of genius, 
 a book which no man can write, a book on which the light from 
 Heaven is shining, and which he will carry with him even to his 
 grave. For him " Remembrance, like a Sovereign Prince, main- 
 
214 PILGRIM OF THE JUNGFRAU. [CHAP. XLVI. 
 
 tains a stately gallery," and there are, within the silent chambers 
 of his soul, treasures 
 
 " More precious far, 
 Than that accumulated store of Gold 
 And orient gems, which, for a day of need, 
 The Sultan hides within ancestral tombs." 
 
 In gathering the treasures and receiving the suggestions of na- 
 ture, we need, more than all things else, a prayerful, kind, and 
 open heart. Mountains, to such an one, are as the stepping- 
 places of angels ; the forms and influences that inhabit them seem 
 supernatural. 
 
 " Less than divine command they spurn ; 
 But this we from the mountains learn, 
 And this the valleys show, 
 That never will they deign to hold 
 Communion where the heart is cold 
 To human weal and wo. 
 
 The man of abject soul in vain 
 Shall walk the Marathonian plain, 
 Or thread the shadowy gloom, 
 That still invests the guardian pass 
 Where stood sublime Leonidas 
 Devoted to the tomb." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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