n 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 at
Lyons than the Severn at Shrewsbury, 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.

Sec. 13. Now, that such a structure is the best and wisest possible, 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 beneficence among these clouds of heaven? Or is it the
descendant of a long race of mountains, existing under appointed laws of
birth and endurance, death and decrepitude?

Sec. 14. There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers
audibly by the murmur of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is
_not_ as it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded
with the wrec