us, than the hill which we were immediately ascending, and often believed we had attained the summit before we had conquered half the road. On the other side we were presented with a majestic sweep down the mountain, and along the lofty hills that inclose the valley of the Rhine, stretching away to the piny forests rising above the vale of Splugen. After descending a considerable way almost perpendicularly, but on a firm and well-constructed road, we came in view of that celebrated river which we had lately beheld bearing its thundering mass of waters to the ocean, but which, now just springing from its source, steals placidly along the quiet valley, soft as the first sleep of infancy after it has waked to new existence.'

On the ascent to the glaciers our travellers observed, that the side of the mountain produced a fine short grass; and the peasants were spreading as we passed their scented harvest, to the pleasant, but fleeting sun-beam, eager to improve the precarious blessing, and snatch the golden moments! Along a fine amphitheatre of mountains, we spied the inhabitants of the various cottages at this pastoral employment, hanging on the steeps like goats, to turn the swath, and leaving us to wonder by what ingenuity the grass was first mowed. These chalets, or mountain cabins, are fitted for the region where they are placed, though of an order of architecture of which Palladio gives no description. They are in general built with the wood of the pine or the larch, but when not in the neighbourhood of forests, are erected with stone. To most of the chalets the mountain itself affords one side ready constructed, as they are usually placed in such situations that when the avalanche rolls from the top, it shall find no resistance from those habitations, shielded by the friendly hill that rises abrupt behind, but passing harmless over the sheltered dwelling, fling at a safe distance its destructive mass.

The ascent to the glaciers on the opposite side of the valley appeared so romantic, that we regretted for a moment that we had not taken a route, which seemed not only pleasanter, but shorter; our mountain companions, however, silenced our murmurs by assuring us that every step we took, though apparently leading us further from the opposite mountain, would at length

bring us nearer. We had been so often deceived in our ideas of distances in the Alps, which it requires long usage and a mountain-eye to calculate accurately, that we gave up our reason to the care of these Grisons, persuaded that some mountain-miracle would be wrought in our favour.

"The latter part of our journey was extreme toil; at some distance from the top, the mule which had hitherto carried me was left tied to a rock, and our guides supported me up the rugged steep; my fellow-travellers, who were furnished with crampons, little machines buckled to the feet, with points. to enable the wearer to keep his hold, purchased their security by excessive fatigue from wearing them.

'We were frequently overcome by the extreme heat, as well as by the difficulty of the path, and often stopped to cool our fever at the torrent which we saw bursting above, from its No inconvenience, we were told, resulted from taking this cooling draught; though far from being convinced of the truth of this assertion, we were glad to find an excuse in the example of our Grison companions, for quaffing this delicious beverage; and like our first parent, "when not deceiv'd, but fondly overcome," he tasted "of that fair enticing fruit," so we, against our better knowledge, scrupled not to drink large libations of this tempting nectarious water.

With an inexpressible sensation of fatigue like the giddiness of delirium, breathless, and burning with heat, we threw ourselves, some time after mid-day, on the grass, along the icy boundary, from whose base rushed the torrent whence we gathered the icicles that again slackened our excessive thirst. These feelings of parched heat were not the effects of fatigue; we had taken as violent exercise beneath the hot noon-tide rays in the Italian vallies, with less feverish sensations than we now experienced in those regions of winter. After a slight interval of repose, however, we found ourselves restored to that feeling of serene, tranquil delight, for which the philosophers who have written on the theory of the Higher Alps, account, from the purity of the atmosphere at that immense elevation and which state of soothing happiness Rousseau has described with his usual eloquence, in a letter to Julia.

'While my fellow-travellers amused themselves by wander. ing over that world of ice, a difficult and dangerous enterprize, I sat down on the border of the glacier, to enjoy the new and magnificent vision around me. On the right, rocks and mountains of ice arose in dread and sublime perspective; before me, St. Bernardin lifted its barren and uncovered top; and nearly in the same direction, the eye wanders over a chain of glaciers which separates the valley of the Rhine from the subject countries of the Grisons, Bormeo, and the Valteline. These were the glaciers which mid-way, we regretted not having scaled, and which our guides told us we should reach sooner in the direction we had already taken. So far as we might trust to the testimony of our senses, they were not mistaken. These glaciers appeared to touch that on which we were now placed; and it seemed as if we had only to descend a little from our present elevation, in order to climb the savage and naked pyramids of rocks which raised themselves up from the far-spread desert of ice, like barren islands from a troubled sea. We were, however, separated from those objects by a space of several miles, measured on the ground; but the intervening gulph was hid from our sight by the swell of the mountains. On the left, the eye was borne over the amphitheatre of hills, green with pasturage, up to the ridge of ice, stretching along its own sullen and perhaps incroaching boundary. The cattle were cropping the herbage on the steep, and the chamois bounding over the rocks, for such the Grison peasant told me were a few playful animals I perceived at a great distance at the edge of the glacier, over which my fellowtravellers were wandering. I employed the hours of meditation in throwing together the new images with which the Alpine scenery had filled my mind, into the form of an hymn, to the author of nature; and no spot can surely be more congenial to devotional feelings, than that theatre where the divinity has displayed the most stupendous of his earthly works.

The lengthening shadow of the icy wall, at the foot of which I was sitting, drew me from my meditations, and I began to be seriously alarmed at the absence of my friends. The opposite glaciers were now lighted up with that glowing

rose-coloured hue, with which they are tinged at parting day. I gazed with rapture on this glorious vision, which I had before seen at an immense distance, and with feeble impressions compared to the enthusiastic, the solemn emotion I now experienced. The clouds were rolling high above the valley, but remotely beneath the spot where I stood, in gorgeously coloured billows, as their upper surfaces were tinged by the last rays of the sun.

While I was contemplating these majestic images, my fellow-travellers hailed us from a distant part of the mountain, to which they had descended from the glacier. There was no time left to listen to their

"Travels' history,

Of Anters vast, and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heaven,"

all of which I should have been very seriously inclined to hear, if our guides had not reminded us, that though the tops of the mountains where we stood, were still rejoicing in the light of day, darkness already brooded over the face of the vallies.

The vapours gathered thicker as the evening advanced ; and from the brow of the first slope where we descended, we paused a moment to snatch a nearer view of the tumultuous swelling tide of clouds into which we were about to plunge, rolling in silent but awful discordance along the valley, between the majestic streights of the glaciers.

"We had scarcely gained the spot where we had left our mule, before the sun had taken his last leave of the pointed rocks on the opposite glacier, and night seemed rising from the valley. We found the bridle in the place where we had tied it to the rock, but the mule, in whose reputation for patience we had placed too much confidence, or who had formed a better judgment of the fit hour of retreat than ourselves, had withdrawn his head, and absconded. I had rather been borne, than supported to this spot, between two of our guides; a mode of conveyance which was both disagreeable and inconvenient. To walk down to the valley was for me impossible, to look for the mule along the mountains would

have been a vain attempt, and to have sought another from below, would have delayed our return till midnight. In this perplexity, one of our Grison guides, who had rambled a few paces in search of the animal, returned with his arms full of shrubs, which he placed in two leathern girdles fastened to the long poles that are the walking sticks of the glaciers, and tied them together, so as to form a sort of chair, or litter; on this I placed myself, not without some apprehension, but was carried in perfect safety down to the cottage where we had breakfasted in the morning, and where we found our mule, who had been caught marching homewards early in the evening, and detained by the cottagers till our return.'

Miss Williams next visited the source of the Rhine, and various other parts of Switzerland, after which, a milder government having been established in France, she returned to Paris, where says she, I had only scenes of gratulation to witness, and only tears of luxury to shed!'