severe, or the summer sultry and prolonged, as the ground is more or less rapidly inclined, and various other uncertain circumstances. It seems certain, that almost all the glaciers do increase in a greater or less degree. The people of Chamounix say, they increase for seven years, and then diminish for seven years-an arbitrary assumption, on which Saussure remarks, "La regularité plaît aux hommes-elle semble leur assujettir les évênemens." In the same manner, people on the sea-coast tell you the tide advances in a regular series, first of nine small waves and then of three large ones. The sun, rains, warm winds, the internal heat of the earth, seem to place certain providential limits to the advances of this wintry reign, which have hitherto checked its encroachments on the fertile valleys of the Alps. The glacier des Bos sons is by far the most beautiful of those at Chamounix. Its descent being extremely rapid, and the valley down which it descends being rugged and uneven, the mass of ice is split and broken into pyramids, and cones, and all sorts of beautiful and capricious forms. The ice is very pure and unsoiled (a very rare circumstance), and the conical masses are sometimes of 80, 90, and 100 feet in height, of the most beautiful white, green, and sky-blue colours. They look like the ruins of marble palaces, temples, and obelisks, reared and overthrown by the hands of an Oriental genius. They have the appearance of productions of art; but it is the unreal art of fairies-not that of men. We crossed over this fine glacier, in an upper part of it, where it presented a sort of table land, intersected occasionally by enormous chasms and crevices; down which we rolled blocks of granite, which produced a rumbling like distant thunder in the bowels of the glacier. The air of the glacier was remarkably inspiring and elating from its freshness and rarity. On a sudden, I was surprised to feel my face fanned by a sultry current from the South, which passed away, and then came again, like a sirocco. The effect was so surprising, that I stopped short in walking. On mentioning it to Michel Devassaux, our guide, he said it was not uncommon; and that these warm winds (of which Saussure also speaks) were particularly felt on the glacier des Bossons, owing to its being opposite to several indentures or breaks in the Alpine chain, which give a passage to the currents of air from Italy and the South. The perpetual movements and constant noises in the glaciers have a very striking effect, and give them, in a less degree, that impressive character of life and animation which belongs to a river or the ocean. Their sounds are among Nature's most singular and sublime voices. A rattling crash is heard in the ice, an internal rumbling-you then perceive a commotion in the glacier for a space of many yards-new fissures open-projecting masses of ice break and fall, blocks of granite roll down the sides of the glacier, and set in motion hundreds of other rocks and stones, and the confused clatter and noise dies away like a distant fire of artillery, leaving an awful silence till the constant pressure of the upper part of the glacier against the lower again produces a fresh dislocation of the masses. Every glacier is the source of a river or stream of greater or less consequence, furnished by the melted snow which flows during summer perpetually from the foot of the glacier. A large supply proceeds from the ice at the bottom, melted by the internal heat of the earth. When you examine the junction between the glacier and the soil, you perceive the rapidity with which this dissolu tion takes place. The glacier appears completely disjoined from the earth, and seems as if it might slide forward in a detached mass. The water dissolved from the surface of the glacier rushes down in perpetual small torrents through the chasms and fissures in the ice to the bottom, and a large accumulated stream flows forth from the foot of the glacier, foaming impetuously along the valley. The source of the Arveiron, which rushes out of the glacier des Bois, is one of the most curious objects in the valley. The force of the stream gushing forth from the glacier has hollowed out an immense vaulted arch about 50 or 60 feet in height, composed of the most lovely bluish ice. It is a complete cave of ice; the roof of which is formed of rude and jagged masses of solid snow ice. These masses are continually detaching themselves and falling into the torrent below. The blue and celadon hues of the ice, its light transparent substance, and grotesque and fantastic shapes, give the cavern an air of fairy-work, which, added to the constant roar of the torrent, far surpasses in beauty and interest the Empress Catherine's ice palaces, or even the caves of ice in the vision of Kubla Khan. The shadow of the dome of pleasure A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice. I think every candid person will confess that Mont Blanc seen from Chamounix, on the whole, rather disappoints expectations. It is unquestionably a sublime object, but the valley is so immediately below it, that the mountain is very much foreshortened in the view; you hardly see its summit, and lose much of its gigantic proportions. You can form little idea of the majesty and beauty of St. Paul's standing in St. Paul's church yard. The immense expanse of perpetual snow reminds one of the mountain's colossal height, in comparison with the bare and rocky needles around, rather than its mere effect on the eye. Add to this, that the eye is so familiarized to stupendous heights by the neighbouring mountains, that the additional 3 or 4000 feet which belong to Mont Blanc produce an effect proportioned only to the relative height of the mountain, not to its absolute height as the great monarch of European mountains. If we could put Mont Blanc on Salisbury plain it would equal all that our imagination can dream about it; but elbowed on all sides by mountains of 10, 11, and 12,000 feet, he is the giant monarch of giant subjects, not a giant among men of ordinary stature. The height of Mont Blanc as seen from Chamounix, it is to be observed, is greater than that of Chimborazo, as seen from its base in the valley of Tapia: the summit of Chimborazo being 11,232 feet above the vale of Tapia, and Mont Blanc rising to 11,532 feet above Chamounix. But the absolute height of Chimborazo above the sea is 20,148 feet, and that of Mont Blanc 14,700 feet. The weather during our stay at Chamounix was not favourable, and I regretted not being able to accomplish the ascent of the Buet or the Breven, or some other height from which you might command a view of these gigantic Alps, of which one forms a very imperfect conception while at their feet in the valley. We of course did not omit the ordinary excursion to the Montanvert, a grand eminence at the foot of Mont Blanc, its steep sides covered Of the loud hills shook with its mountain-mirth, There was just sufficient apprehension of possible danger to heighten the awfulness of the scene, without overpowering the sense of admiration and enjoyment. The wind rose violently and suddenly with the storm, and the deracinated trees strewed about the mountain forest around us bore evidence of whole ranks having been on former occasions swept away by its fury. The guides had before told us that these bourasques were sometimes very formidable. The heavens, however, had soon spent their fury, and the sun was soon laughing the clouds away with playful scorn.' The Chalet on the mountain was filled with the whole party from Chamounix, drying their clothes at a wretched fire, reading the Album, and eating mountain strawberries and cream, together with the cold fowls and Burgundy, which had been packed on the mules. The immense glacier of the Mer de Glace lies behind the Montanvert, a few hundred feet below the summit of the mountain. The enormous Aiguille verte, the highest of all the needles round Mont Blanc, the pointed and graceful Aiguille du Dru, and the rugged Aiguille de Charmoz, rear their heads into the clouds immediately above the Mer de Glace. The glacier is much more extensive, and the surrounding mountains more sublime, than the immediate accompaniments of the glacier des Bossons. But it has none of the same beauty or singularity of form, and the ice is generally dirty and discoloured by decomposed rock and earth. Mont Blanc and the glaciers are, at Chamounix, the same all-engrossing objects which the sea forms at a bathing-place in England, or the grand saloon and gaming-table at a bathing-place in Germany. All conversation, all plans, all inquiries, have some reference to these all-interesting objects. You look for the hoary summit of Mont Blanc as soon as you open your window in the morning, and never miss the rays of the dying sun reflected on it in the evening. It forms the barometer of the guides, whose weather-wisdom predicts bad weather when the clouds rest on the summit, or, as they say, when the Mont Blanc puts on his cap; and you find a cluster of guides and travellers standing about the inns, and examining and discussing the aspect of the mountain, whether the snow has increased or diminished in the night, tracing and pointing out the localities of every rock and fissure, and every bearing of its topography, with an interest and busy admiration which every individual partakes. The concourse of visitors is so great during three or four months in the summer, that this valley, where the snow lies for nine months in the year, and which is hemmed in by barriers of mountain and ice on all sides, affords two of the neatest and most comfortable inns that I know on the Continent, with good beds, and a good table at which we used to sit down to a very pleasant dinner at six o'clock, in a society, male and female, entirely English. Conversation was very animated of course, turning principally on the natural wonders around us, and the excursions projected or executed by the various individuals. The guides at Chamounix are a very peculiar race of people: active, intelligent, and obliging, with a good knowledge of the country, and often a considerable smattering of mineralogy and natural history. To the common quickness and smartness of the Savoyard character, they add a considerable acquaintance with the world from their intercourse with persons of all countries. François Simon accompanied us for many days, and we took leave of him with great regret at Martigny. He as well as most of his compeers was a rigid Catholic, exact in his meagre-days and masses, and his obeisances and doffings of the cap to every chapel and crucifix. Indulgences and remissions of stated numbers of days in purgatory are proclaimed very liberally on crosses and posts around Chamounix, to all the faithful who shall say an ave or a credo before the said crosses or posts. These proclamations are in the name of his excellency the Cardinal Bishop of the diocese; and our friend Simon assured us gravely that he reckoned on laying up in the whole a very important store of redeemed days to set off against the future account against him. Two Catholic priests are resident in the valley, who are apparently very attentive to their parochial duties in instructing the children and attending the sick. One of them with whom we conversed, was a well-informed and sensible man. Every thing we heard and saw would lead us to augur well of the morals and simple habits of these secluded mountaineers. D. ་་ PORTRAIT OF A SEPTUAGENARY; BY HIMSELF. "I will conduct you to a hill-side, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds, that the harp of Orpheus was not half so charming." AFTER all the critical denunciations against the unfortunate wight, who suffered the smallest inkling of himself or his affairs to transpire in his writings;-after the pretty general confinement of Auto-biography to players, courtesans, and adventurers;-after the long absorption of individuality in the royal and literary plural we, the age has at last adopted the right legitimate Spanish formula of "I the King": our writers, from Lord Byron downwards, have become their own heroes, either direct or allegorized; and if any one will cast his eye over the columns of our periodical literature, he will find one half of the articles to be personal narratives, or auto-biography in some of its innumerable ramifications. If self-preservation be the first law of nature, self-description seems now to be the second, and we may fairly pronounce the present to be the golden age of Egotism. 1, for one, do not complain of this, provided it be done with talent; for a long familiarity with literature has produced its usual effects upon me, making me more solicitous as to the manner than the matter; and as a good horse cannot be of a bad colour, so I hold that an able writer can hardly have a bad subject. We can scarcely expect so much talent, and we need hardly require so much frankness, as characterised the Confessions of Rousseau, for no paper could fail to be interesting if it gave a faithful transcript of the author's mind. We have enough of dates and registers, and the freaks of fortune, and all the changes and ills that flesh is heir to; but it appears to me, that we are very scantily supplied with histories of mind. Mr. Coleridge, indeed, has given us a psychological curiosity," but as it has reference only to one eventful night, it serves to stimulate rather than allay our appetite for similar revelations. Some of our youngest writers, who can have experienced little vicissitude of mental or bodily estate, indulge in the most trivial detail of personal matter:-may not I then, a not unobservant veteran, record the life of my mind, (if I may so express myself) with as much privilege and immunity as is conceded to these chroniclers of external and physical existence? "That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;" and thus inspired, I shall proceed to give a sketch of the progress of my mind, so far as I have myself been enabled to pronounce judgment upon it, suppressing some things, but mis-stating none; and occasionally indulging in those diffusive and desultory wanderings which my own experience has proved to be almost inevitable ingredients in the character of a Septuagenary. 66 Few men perhaps are better qualified for this task; for owing to a defective memory, I have, from a very early age, been in the habit of keeping a Journal, not of facts only, but of feelings, thoughts, and impressions; and thus I may be said never to have forgotten any thing, or, if I had forgotten it, always to have possessed the power of recovering what I had lost, by a reference to my Diary. Mysterious operation!-Certain hieroglyphics are marked upon paper with a black liquid, which, after a lapse of years, shall have the power of penetrating through the eyes into the sensorium, and of calling up from their |