ero once more face to
face with the Rosenlaui glacier and the jagged pyramid of the
Wetterhorn.

To this there is no special objection. Every man has a right to heap
virtues and graces upon his hero, and to heighten their effect by as
much uncouthness and insincerity as he chooses to attribute to the
subordinates; but so far as he professes to represent life, he should
keep within the bounds of natural laws. If he chooses to introduce
time-honored personages, we shall not quarrel with him, although we
certainly think it desirable that some fresh piquancy in their
characters shall be the vindication of their reappearance. We may regret
that a subtle, but palpable ridicule is cast upon foreign missions,--a
cause which, whether successful or unsuccessful in its immediate
objects, will forever stand recorded as one of the most unselfish, the
most sublime, and the most Christ-like movements that have ever been
originated by man. The hero does, indeed, patronize them to the extent
of saying that he has "seen something of your missions in India, and
believes that they are capable of accomplishing much good,"--adding,
however, lest his words excite hopes too sanguine, "Still, you must not
expect immediate returns. It is only the lowest caste that is now
reached, and the Christianizing of India must come, eventually, from the
highest,"--words which we shall be very ready to take as opinion, but
very slow to receive as oracle, since, from the time when the Founder of
Christianity was upon the earth, and the common people heard him gladly,
while the higher classes thrust him out of their synagogues, till the
present day, the history of Christianity has been the history of an
influence rising from the lower layers of society into the upper, rather
than filtering down from the upper into the lower.

Since, also, however vulgarly the Grindles may put it, it is true that
drunkenness _is_ the agony of wives, the dread of mothers,--that it does
destroy hopes, desolate hearths, break hearts,--that within the last two
years it has added to its terrible deeds wide disasters to our arms,
long sorrow to our country, and fruitless death in a thousand
households,--we think it would have been well, if the discredit cast
upon temperance measures, and the discomfiture visited upon its
advocates, had been accompanied by a less covert recognition of the evil
and by a more obvious sympathy with its victims. Since the methods taken
to insure self-c