summer afternoon, up the
valley of Zermatt (a German valley), the sun shining brightly on grassy
knolls and through fringes of pines, the goats leaping happily, and the
cattle bells ringing sweetly, and the snowy mountains shining like
heavenly castles far above. We see, a little way off, a small white
chapel, sheltered behind one of the flowery hillocks of mountain turf;
and we approach its little window, thinking to look through it into some
quiet home of prayer; but the window is grated with iron, and open to
the winds, and when we look through it, behold--a heap of white human
bones mouldering into whiter dust!

So also in that same sweet valley, of which I have just been speaking,
between Chamouni and the Valais, at every turn of the pleasant pathway,
where the scent of the thyme lies richest upon its rocks, we shall see a
little cross and shrine set under one of them; and go up to it, hoping
to receive some happy thought of the Redeemer, by whom all these lovely
things were made, and still consist. But when we come near--behold,
beneath the cross, a rude picture of souls tormented in red tongues of
hell fire, and pierced by demons.

Sec. 12. As we pass towards Italy the appearance of this gloom deepens; and
when we descend the southern slope of the Alps we shall find this
bringing forward of the image of Death associated with an endurance of
the most painful aspects of disease, so that conditions of human
suffering, which in any other country would be confined in hospitals,
are permitted to be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this
exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an
insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the
ruined wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite in
expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole
land. It does not appear to arise from poverty, nor careless contentment
with little: there is here nothing of Irish recklessness or humor; but
there seems a settled obscurity in the soul,--a chill and plague, as if
risen out of a sepulchre, which partly deadens, partly darkens, the eyes
and hearts of men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through every breeze
and every stone. "Instead of well-set hair, baldness, and burning
instead of beauty."

Nor are definite proofs wanting that the feeling is independent of mere
poverty or indolence. In the most gorgeous and costly palace garden the
statues will be found g