d-world was a pageant in itself,
as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been.
Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was
driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant
world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness
blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles
away. Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and the
stars were shining brightly. At our feet the earth was folding itself
to sleep; the plain was wholly lost; little islands of white mist had
formed themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on their marshy
estuaries; the birds were hushed; the gentian-cups were filling to the
brim with dew. Night had descended on the mountain and the plain; the
show was over.

The dawn was whitening in the east next morning, when we again
scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake.
Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of
vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we
on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were
all there now--cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy
peaks, from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the Grivola in the
west to the distant Bernina and the Ortler in the east. Supreme among
them towered Monte Rosa--queenly, triumphant, gazing down in proud
pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any point of the Italian
plain. There is no mountain like her. Mont Blanc himself is scarcely
so regal; and she seems to know it, for even the clouds sweep humbled
round her base, girdling her at most, but leaving her crown clear and
free. Now, however, there were no clouds to be seen in all the sky.
The mountains had a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be
blessed. Above them, in the cold grey air, hung a low black arch
of shadow, the shadow of the bulk of the huge earth, which still
concealed the sun. Slowly, slowly this dark line sank lower, till,
one by one, at last, the peaks caught first a pale pink flush; then
a sudden golden glory flashed from one to the other, as they leapt
joyfully into life. It is a supreme moment this first burst of life
and light over the sleeping world, as one can only see it on rare days
and in rare places like the Monte Generoso. The earth--enough of it at
least for us to picture to ourselves the whole--lies at our feet; and
we feel as the