from their ledges, would descend at once upon the inhabitable ground,
over which no year would pass without recording some calamity of
earth-slip or avalanche; while in the course of their fall both the
stones and the snow would strip the woods from the hillsides, leaving
only naked channels of destruction where there are now the sloping
meadow and the chestnut glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast
down at once into the warmer air, would all melt rapidly in the
spring, causing furious inundation of every great river for a month or
six weeks. The snow being then all thawed, except what lay upon the
highest peaks in regions of nearly perpetual frost, the rivers would
be supplied during the summer only by fountains, and the feeble
tricklings on sunny days from the high snows. The Rhone, under such
circumstances, would hardly be larger, in summer, than the Severn, and
many Swiss valleys would be left almost without moisture. All these
calamities are prevented by the peculiar Alpine structure which has
been described. The broken rocks and the sliding snow of the high
peaks, instead of being dashed at once to the vales, are caught upon
the desolate shelves, or shoulders, which everywhere surround the
central crests. The soft banks which terminate these shelves,
traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest
wood, while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a
climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so
cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either
form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even
to the close of the year,--in either case supplying constant,
abundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath,
and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers.

Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible,[25] is
indeed sufficient reason for its existence, and to many people it may
seem useless to question farther respecting its origin. But I can
hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one of these towers
of central rock, and yet not also asking himself, Is this indeed the
actual first work of the Divine Master, on which I gaze? Was the great
precipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust?
Were its clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the
letters were on the tables of the law, and was it thus left to bear
its eternal testimony to His ben