When, however, the mist and storm have been on the mountains, the sublimity which Wordsworth has exquisitely described, arrays an Alpine scene at the setting of the sun :

"Tis storm: and hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening murmur pɔur.
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight,
Dark is the region es with coming night.
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm
Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form.
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline.
Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned, that flame with gold.
Behind his sail the peasant tries to shun

The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire

The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire!"

To allude to only one other change,-that which occurs during the reign of hoaryheaded winter, it is difficult to realise. As the mountain-ranges are but one mass of whiteness, the eye can no longer distinguish the loftiest peaks, or measure their respective distances. The lakes which, under the brilliant beams of a summer's sun, reflected all the colours of the rainbow, are now dark and sombre, their cbon-like surface gloomingly contrasting with the snowy borders which surround them. The cascades, which before sparkled so merrily in the solar rays, leaping buoyantly, or dashing violently, from crag to crag, with so loud a roar, are now pent up in silent slumberings, in huge masses of ice.

All around there is the desolation of death. No flocks wander along the mountain sides. No herds of cattle resort to them in quest of pasture. No bird hovers over the landscape with feeble or with mighty wing. No stream dashes along the valleys. The very trees, heavy laden with their wintry coverings, stand stiff and motionless. The snow which lies on the surface of the earth seems like the funeral-pall of nature. The silence that prevails is profound, and almost painful. The very echoes are departed, and the blast of a trumpet, if sounded, would die as soon as blown. But there is sublimity in the stillness and desolation. Yet, look, there is one sign of life,-it is the tall column of pale, blue smoke, curling slowly upwards,-the proof that a village is at hand. To wander in that direction, is to find that the road is cleared for some distance, and on entering the village, every house appears carefully disengaged from the vast masses of snow which collect around it, while other paths lead to the storehouse of fuel, and to other spots around.

Glaciers are natural appendages to snow mountains; the former indeed cannot exist without the latter-" the eternal reservoirs," as they have sometimes been called. The snow-line itself constitutes the point where the snow mountain terminates and the glacier begins. This may be described as a stream of ice flowing down a declivity between banks, which are sometimes precipitous. The sea of ice has its source in the regions of perpetual snow; and is, in fact, snow passing into ice and mingled with it. The impression that to walk on a glacier is as difficult as to do so on a frozen sheet of water, is therefore erroneous; for the entire surface, except where it is vertical, or nearly so, is covered with gritty particles. These particles are derived from rocks on the surface of the glacier, and from the sides of the valley down which the ice-stream flows;partly from the motion of the glacier itself, and partly from the rains washing down the particles from the higher grounds.

The chasms in the glaciers are frequently many feet wide, and more than a hundred deep. Their formation, which never takes place in winter, but is frequent during summer, is accompanied with a loud noise resembling thunder, and a shock which makes

the neighbouring mountains tremble. These chasms are subject to change every day, and almost every hour, and hence the ascent of the glaciers is so dangerous to travellers. Sometimes there are found in the glaciers pyramids of ice, of a regular form and a

considerable elevation, on the tops of which are placed large pieces of rocks. At the lower extremity of the glaciers is an excavation in the form of a grotto, frequently a hundred

feet high, and from sixty to eighty wide, whence issues a small river, bringing down a blueish water. Though every single crystal of the ice of the glaciers seems perfectly white,

the whole mass is of a blue colour, passing through every shade, from the most feeble sky-blue to that of the lapis lazuli, and it is most pure and beautiful in the lower part of the chasms.

Varied and numerous are the beauties of the glaciers, partly owing to their peculiar nature, and partly to the contrast they present with the country around. Before the eye of the traveller extend immense icy masses, traversed, in all directions, by yawning chasms descending to a depth unknown, and surrounded by icy turrets, cliffs, and perpendicular walls, of the most divers and fantastic forms. As the background of the vast picture, black rocks, of immense altitude, arise in the shape of peaks, out of a sea of snow of spotless purity; and horror would at once thrill through his frame, did not astonishment and admiration steal over him, and hold him spell-bound at the spectacle he now surveys.

A blueish tint is spread over the whole Alpine region, up to the very borders of the snow mountains, attaining in their vast caverns the deepest hue and greatest beauty. And when he turns his back, the icy masses on which he stands appear surrounded by forests, fields, pastures, and orchards. To the left, there is a meadow of the most verdant turf, where flocks of sheep are grazing, while the shepherd tunes his flute or sings his pastoral lay; to the right, is a gentle slope, covered with full-ripe barley, which the reapers are intent on gathering in; whilst before him, on the banks of a river, with its whitish green waters, is a neatly-built village, with its houses surrounded by fruit-trees, amidst which cherries abound. "At no great distance are a few groves of high foresttrees, mostly of the pine kind, which, by their sombre aspect, do not fail to impress a degree of earnestness on the cheerful landscape. At many places the scenery receives an additional zest from a small lake inclosed by meadows, from whose smooth surface the surrounding mountains are reflected, with their glaciers, snow-fields, and dark peaks. At another spot a cataract precipitates its silvery waters down the perpendicular declivities of a black rocky mass, the falling stream being frequently deflected from its straight line by a gust of wind." •

Strange indeed is the appearance of an immense ruin changed into ice. Yet its icy masses of fantastic forms, rising with sharp points or edges to the altitude of a hundred feet, are subject to continual changes. "Every moment in summer," it has been said, "such steeples, walls, or columns, break down partly or entirely; and when these icy masses are standing on the edge of a perpendicular or precipitous rock, they tumble down with a loud but peculiar crash, and in falling are broken up into many thousand pieces, which, when viewed from afar, resemble the cataract of a torrent. This is one of the most extraordinary and grandest views the traveller can enjoy in the Alps."

The declaration of the poet

"The glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day,"

is now an established fact, for which we are specially indebted to the intelligence, energy, and perseverance of Mr. Forbes. Prior to his examination of the matter, but little was known respecting it. He made his observations opposite a solid wall of rock in contact with the ice, on which the progress of the glacier might be marked as it slid by; while a hole in the ice was made to the depth of two feet, over which a theodolite—a surveying instrument—was nicely centred by means of a plumb line. A level ran directly to the smooth face of the glacier, being sixteen and a half inches more in advance than it had been twenty-six hours before. Thus, the motion of a glacier was, for the first time, accurately determined.

• Wittich's "Curiosities of Geography.”

The question now arose, was this motion equable, or otherwise? On the following day, Mr. Forbes brought it to the test, and found that in twenty-five and a half hours, the advance had been seventeen and a half inches, and consequently a little more rapid than on the preceeding day. On another occasion it was not so great. But the object aimed at was gained. "The marks on the rock," says Mr. Forbes, "indicated by a regular descent, in which time was marked out as by a shadow on a dial; and the unequivocal evidence which I had now of the sinking or rising of the glacier; for if this varied, the telescope placed at the top of the theodolite would be no longer level, and the amount of variation being known, the alteration in the surface of the glacier could be easily determined. Other fixed marks were made for noting the downward or forward motion of the icy stream, which was afterwards measured from day to day on the smooth face of the rock;-first with a common pencil, and afterwards indented in the rock with a chisel, above which a mark was made with red paint, to which the date was affixed."

On the 27th of June, 1842, Mr. Forbes made his first observation, and on the telescope being turned on the rock, the red mark was found to be left far above, and the new position for the first time obtained, he says "That even whilst walking on a glacier, we are day by day, and hour by hour, imperceptibly carried on, by the resistless flow of this icy stream, with a solemn slowness that eludes our unaided senses, and filled me with an admiration almost to awe; whilst I foresaw with lively interest the definite and satisfactory knowledge of laws which would result from these methods of observation."

The moraines, sometimes called glacier-walls, are icy masses, extending along the lateral margins of the glaciers, and usually surrounding also their lower terminations. Except where the glacier is connected with the snowy masses from which it branches off, they surround the glacier on all sides. On the top of these walls are fragments of rock of different dimensions, and stony rubbish which have there accumulated so as to cover the upper part entirely and to form long dykes. In some of the larger glaciers, such a wall is found in the middle of the icy mass, where it runs parallel to the walls lying along its borders. Some of them attain an elevation of sixty or eighty feet above their base; but in approaching the lower extremity of the glacier, they sink gradually down, so that at the termination they are nearly on a level with the surface. At some places are found the glacier-tables; they consist of columns of ice, rising at times to eighty feet and more, and supporting on their tops a large piece of rock, which projects on all sides over the icy columns.

Another Alpine phenomenon may now be noticed; for, sometimes, loud crashes, like thunder-claps, and like them, too, followed by prolonged rolling, interrupt the reverie in which the mind of the traveller is naturally engaged, awakening, where the cause is unknown, a feeling of terror; and showing, when aware of it, how enormous are the masses of ice whose fall produces so tremendous a crash. Avalanches are, indeed, among the most extraordinary and terrible of natural phenomena. They occur where valleys lie embosomed in high mountains covered with snow, but as the declivities of the Alps are very steep, they are there proportionately frequent, and vary alike in their causes and results with different seasons.

The summer avalanche is caused by the submelting of the snow, which undermines its support, and the mass, once set in motion, descends with great violence. Such phenomena arc of frequent occurrence in some particular districts, and that commonly when western winds prevail, and the sky is very serene. Simond thus pictures a party observing these astounding phenomena from the top of the Wengern alp, looking towards the Jungfrau, the two Eigers, and some other of the highest summits of the Alps :“We sometimes saw a blue line suddenly drawn across a field of pure white, then another above it; another, and another, all parallel, and attended each time by a loud crash, like cannon; producing together the effect of long protracted peals of thunder.