s are munching their last meal. Upon the
corn-bin sits a knecht. We light our pipes and talk. He tells me of
the valley of Arosa (a hawk's flight westward over yonder hills), how
deep in grass its summer lawns, how crystal-clear its stream, how blue
its little lakes, how pure, without a taint of mist, 'too beautiful to
paint,' its sky in winter! This knecht is an Ardueser, and the valley
of Arosa lifts itself to heaven above his Langwies home. It is his
duty now to harness a sleigh for some night-work. We shake hands and
part--I to sleep, he for the snow.

VII

The lake has frozen late this year, and there are places in it where
the ice is not yet firm. Little snow has fallen since it froze--about
three inches at the deepest, driven by winds and wrinkled like the
ribbed sea-sand. Here and there the ice-floor is quite black and
clear, reflecting stars, and dark as heaven's own depths. Elsewhere it
is of a suspicious whiteness, blurred in surface, with jagged cracks
and chasms, treacherously mended by the hand of frost. Moving slowly,
the snow cries beneath our feet, and the big crystals tinkle. These
are shaped like fern-fronds, growing fan-wise from a point, and set
at various angles, so that the moonlight takes them with capricious
touch. They flash, and are quenched, and flash again, light darting to
light along the level surface, while the sailing planets and the stars
look down complacent at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above,
around, beneath, is very beautiful--the slumbrous woods, the snowy
fells, and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender
background of the sky. Everything is placid and beautiful; and yet the
place is terrible. For, as we walk, the lake groans, with throttled
sobs, and sudden cracklings of its joints, and sighs that shiver,
undulating from afar, and pass beneath our feet, and die away in
distance when they reach the shore. And now and then an upper crust
of ice gives way; and will the gulfs then drag us down? We are in
the very centre of the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking
heed. Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast between
this circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the dreadful sense of
insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our whole life of this nature?
A passage over perilous deeps, roofed by infinity and sempiternal
things, surrounded too with evanescent forms, that like these
crystals, trodden underfoot, or melted by the Foehn-wind into