mingle in the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy."

Then we were left alone. "All heaven and earth are still, though not in
sleep." The sun shone brightly on the pure white snow by which we were
surrounded; the air was motionless, and not a sound disturbed the
stillness of that memorable afternoon.

At our feet lay the Glacier des Bossons. "Heaven-descended in its
origin, it yet takes its mould and conformation from the hidden womb of
the mountain which brought it forth. At first soft and ductile, it
acquires a character and firmness of its own, as an inevitable destiny
urges it on its onward career. Jostled and constrained by the crosses
and irregularities of its prescribed path, hedged in by impassable
barriers which fix limits to its movements, it yields groaning to its
fate, and still travels forward seamed with the scars of many a conflict
of opposing obstacles. All this while, though wasting, it is renewed by
an unseen power,--it evaporates, but is not consumed.

"On its surface it bears the spoils which, during the progress of its
existence, it has made its own; often weighty burdens devoid of beauty
or value, at times precious masses, sparkling with gems or ore. Having
at length attained its greatest width and extension, commanding
admiration by its beauty and power, waste predominates over supply, the
vital springs begin to fail; it stoops into an attitude of
decrepitude--it drops the burdens one by one it had borne so proudly
aloft--its dissolution is inevitable. But as it is resolved into its
elements, it takes all at once a new, and livelier, and disembarrassed
form; from the wreck of its members it arises 'another, yet the same'--a
noble, full-bodied, arrowy stream, which leaps rejoicing over the
obstacles which had stayed its progress, and hastens through fertile
valleys towards a freer existence, and a final union in the ocean with
the boundless and the infinite."

Northward on the opposite side of the valley rose the Brevent. The
buttress up which we had ridden the day before seemed quite vertical and
inaccessible from this point of view. The pine forest clothing its base
resembled turf, while the zig-zag paths above appeared as fine yellow
threads. Turning towards the west, vast fields of sloping snow formed
the foreground, and towering above them rose the imposing Dome du Goute,
relieved here and there by dark-coloured patches of roc