on amongst the
elements. But the elements, like the heart of man, must rage in
vain--must learn the universal lesson of submission. With them, as
with humanity, despair brings back tranquillity. And now the driving
cloud reveals again the glittering summits of the mountains, and light
falls in laughter on the beaming lake.

How like to a ruined Heaven is this earth! Nay, is it not more
beautiful for being a ruin?

* * * * *

Who can speak of lakes and not think of thee, beautiful Leman? How
calm! how exquisitely blue! Let me call it a liquid sky that is spread
here beneath us. And note how, where the boat presses, or the oar
strikes, it yields ever a still more exquisite hue--akin to the
violet, which gives to the rude pressure a redoubled fragrance--akin
to the gentlest of womankind, whose love plays sweetest round the
strokes of calamity.

Oh, there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I have seen thee in all thy moods, in all thy humours. I have watched
thee in profoundest calm; and suddenly, with little note of
preparation, seen thee lash thy blue waves into a tempest. How
beautiful in their anger were those azure waves crested with their
white foam! And at other times, when all has been a sad unjoyous calm,
I have seen, without being able to trace whence the light had broken,
a soft expanse of brightness steal tremulous over the marble waters. A
smile that seemed to speak of sweet caprice--that seemed to say that
half its anger had been feint.

Yes, verily there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I lie rocking in a boat midway between Vevay and Lausanne. On the
opposite coast are the low purple hills _couching_ beside the lake.
But there, to the left, what an ethereal structure of cloud and snowy
mountain is revealed to me! What a creation of that spirit of beauty
which works its marvels in the unconscious earth! The Alps here, while
they retain all the aerial effect gathered from distance, yet seem to
arise from the very margin of the lake. The whole scene is so
ethereal, you fear to look aside, lest when you look again it may have
vanished like a vision of the clouds.

And why should these little boats, with their tall triangular sails,
which glide so gracefully over the water, be forgotten? The sail,
though an artifice of man, is almost always in harmony with nature.
Nature has adopted it--has lent it some of her own wild
privileges--her o