race, sometimes of a particular locality, and to involve at once much
that is to be blamed and much that is praiseworthy. I mean the
capability of enduring, or even delighting in, the contemplation of
objects of terror--a sentiment which especially influences the temper of
some groups of mountaineers, and of which it is necessary to examine the
causes, before we can form any conjecture whatever as to the real effect
of mountains on human character.

Sec. 10. For instance, the unhappy alterations which have lately taken
place in the town of Lucerne have still spared two of its ancient
bridges; both of which, being long covered walks, appear, in past times,
to have been to the population of the town what the Mall was to London,
or the Gardens of the Tuileries are to Paris. For the continual
contemplation of those who sauntered from pier to pier, pictures were
painted on the woodwork of the roof. These pictures, in the one bridge,
represent all the important Swiss battles and victories; in the other
they are the well-known series of which Longfellow has made so beautiful
a use in the Golden Legend, the _Dance of Death_.

Imagine the countenances with which a committee, appointed for the
establishment of a new "promenade" in some flourishing modern town,
would receive a proposal to adorn such promenade with pictures of the
Dance of Death.

Sec. 11. Now just so far as the old bridge at Lucerne, with the pure, deep,
and blue water of the Reuss eddying down between its piers, and with the
sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away gleaming of lake and Alps
alternating upon the eye on either side; and the gloomy lesson frowning
in the shadow, as if the deep tone of a passing-bell, overhead, were
mingling for ever with the plashing of the river as it glides by
beneath; just so far, I say, as this differs from the straight and
smooth strip of level dust, between two rows of round-topped acacia
trees, wherein the inhabitants of an English watering-place or French
fortified town take their delight,--so far I believe the life of the old
Lucernois, with all its happy waves of light, and mountain strength of
will, and solemn expectation of eternity, to have differed from the
generality of the lives of those who saunter for their habitual hour up
and down the modern promenade. But the gloom is not always of this noble
kind. As we penetrate farther among the hills we shall find it becoming
very painful. We are walking, perhaps, in a