et, and freckled with the dancing shadows of the trees. On this
hand is a chalet, with a vine climbing its wall and mantling its
doorway; on that is a verdant knoll, planted a-top with chestnut trees;
and from amidst their rich, massy foliage, the little spire of the
church, with its glittering vane, looks forth. Near it is the cure's
house, buried amidst flower-blossoms, the foliage of vines, and the
shadows of the sycamore and chestnut. There is not a spot in the little
valley which beauty has not clothed and decked with the most painstaking
care; while grandeur has built up a wall all round, as if to keep out
the storms that sometimes rage here. It looks so quiet and tranquil, and
is so shut in from the great world outside, that one thinks of it as a
spot which happy beings from another sphere might come to visit, and
where he might list the melody of their voices, as they walk at
even-tide amid the bowers of this earthly Eden.

The road makes another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment,--in
the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone,--it has vanished like
a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises
before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting
rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which
you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have
glimpses of those still higher and drearier regions where winter sits on
her eternal throne, and holds undivided sway. Your farther progress is
completely barred. So it looks. A cyclopean wall rises from earth to
heaven. The gate of rock by which you entered seems to have closed its
ponderous jaws behind you, and shut you in,--there to remain till some
supernatural power rend the mountains and give you egress. The mood of
mind changes with the scene. The beauty soothed and softened you; now
you grow impulsive and stern. The awful forms around you blend with the
soul, as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You
feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank
the foundations of the mountains in the depths of the earth, and built
up their giant masses above the clouds; which hung the avalanche on
their brow, clove their unfathomable abysses, poured the river at their
feet, and taught the forked lightning to play around their awful icy
steeps. You seem to hear the sound of the Almighty's footsteps still
echoing amid these hills. There passe