pitous formation. I can only say that my deliberate
impression of the great ravine cut by the torrent which descends from
the Aletsch glacier, about half way between the glacier and Brieg, was,
that its depth is between a _thousand and fifteen hundred_ feet, by a
breadth of between _forty and a hundred_.

But I could not get to the edge of its cliffs, for the tops rounded away
into the chasm, and, of course, all actual measurement was impossible.
There are other similar clefts between the Bietschhorn and the Gemmi;
and the one before spoken of at Ardon, about five miles below Sion,
though quite unimportant in comparison, presents some boldly overhanging
precipices easily observed by the passing traveller, as they are close
to the road. The glen through which the torrent of the Trient descends
into the valley of the Rhone, near Martigny, though not above three or
four hundred feet deep, is also notable for its narrowness, and for the
magnificent hardness of the rock through which it is cut,--a gneiss
twisted with quartz into undulations like those of a Damascus sabre, and
as compact as its steel.

Sec. 41. It is not possible to get the complete expression of these
ravines, any more than of the apse of a Gothic cathedral, into a
picture, as their elevation cannot be drawn on a vertical plane in front
of the eye, the head needing to be thrown back, in order to measure
their height, or stooped to penetrate their depth. But the structure and
expression of the entrance to one of them have been made by Turner the
theme of his sublime mountain-study (Mill near the Grande Chartreuse) in
the Liber Studiorum; nor does he seem ever to have been weary of
recurring for various precipice-subject, to the ravines of the Via Mala
and St. Gothard. I will not injure any of these--his noblest works--by
giving imperfect copies of them; the reader has now data enough whereby
to judge, when he meets with them, whether they are well done or ill;
and, indeed, all that I am endeavoring to do here, as often aforesaid,
is only to get some laws of the simplest kind understood and accepted,
so as to enable people who care at all for justice to make a stand at
once beside the modern mountain-drawing, as distinguished from
Salvator's, or Claude's, or any other spurious work. Take, for instance,
such a law as this of the general oblique inclination of a torrent's
sides, Fig. 89, and compare the Turnerian gorge in the distance of Plate
+21+ here, or of