are superfluous. In this attempt at change they are going contrary to good usage, which must ever be the prevailing law of language, and instead of producing uniformity in the language itself (in which irregularities are of little consequence, nay, sometimes add to its beauty), they are causing one of the greatest evils of language, irregularity, uncertainty, and lawlessness in the mode of using it.

This is owing in a great measure to Dr. Webster's unfortunate orthographical eccentricities, which have set so many spellers and journeymen printers agog to imitate him. It is vexatious to think of the prospect of our becoming provincialized, and as obnoxious to the charge of dialects as any county in England, when heretofore we have been, as a people, so much more pure and classical in our use of the English language than the English people themselves. These innovations should be resisted, nor should any mere Lexicographer, nor University, nor knot of critics, have it in their power to make them prevalent. A great and powerful writer, like John Foster or Edmund Burke, a great Poet, like Shakspere or Milton, is a great king and creator in language; his sway is legitimate, for he enlarges the capacity of his native tongue, and encreases its richness and imaginative power, and when the soul of genius innovates, it has some right so to do. And such innovations will inevitably pass into the soul of language, and become a part of its law. But the mere critic and lexicographer has no right to innovate; he is to take the language as he finds it, and declare and set forth its forms according to good usage; he is out of his province, and becomes an usurper when he attempts to alter it.

These surveyors of the King's English are going about to prune the old oaks of the language of all supernumerary knots, leaves, and branches. If there is any question as to the propriety of their course, whist, they whip you out of their pocket the great American Lexicographer's measuring line, and tell you exactly how far the tree ought to grow, and that every part not sanctioned by his authority must be lopped off. It were well if these gentlemen were compelled to practise the same rules and attempt the same innovations with the bonnets of

their wives, that they are attempting with the King's English. Let them cut off every supernumerary ribbon, and shape the head-dress of the ladies by square and compass, and not by the varieties of taste, and in this enterprise they would find somewhat more of difficulty in carrying out their utilitarian maxims. The sacred word Bible our coterie of critics must needs spell with a small b. This is worse than mere innovation. There is a dignity and sacredness of personification connected with the word Bible, which appropriately manifests itself in making the term a proper name. It partakes of the sacredness of the name of God, and ought always to be written with a capital B, for the usage has obtained, as a matter of religious reverence, and a good and venerable usage it is.

We shall have a grand world by and by, when it is all a dead level. Every mountain is to come down, and every valley to be raised, and a utilitarian railroad is to run straight across the world; an embargo is to be laid on all winding ways; the trees are to have just so many leaves, and no more; the oaks are not to be suffered to sport any more knots; the rose bushes are to put forth no more buds than the essence-makers declare to be wanted; our prayers are to have only so many words, and if any minister appears in the pulpit without a white neck-cloth, or a surplice so many inches long, he is to be suspended and excommunicated. All our hymns are to undergo a revision, and to be cleansed of all hard and naughty words, and pruned of all supernumerary stanzas, and a fine is to be laid on every clergyman who shall give out more than four.

The corps of revisers would do well for awhile to let other men's productions alone, and to leave the English language in the hands of Addison and Goldsmith, Shakspere, Cowper, and our Translation of the Bible. Some poet-pedlars are especially fond of tinkering with old hymns, thinking they can solder up the rents in Watts and Cowper. Walker's Rhyming Dictionary and Webster's great Lexicon might constitute their whole stock in trade. Methinks we can hear them bawling from the wooden seat of their cart, "Any old hymns to mend, old hymns to mend?" This tinkered ware will not last. We should almost as soon think of adopting wooden nutmegs, at the in

stigations of the pedlars "down east," instead of the old-fashioned genuine spices of Morgenland. But alas, the fictitious and the genuine have got so mingled up by generation after generation of menders, that poets like Cowper and Watts would find it difficult themselves, in some cases, to say which was their own version. The same is the case with some of the best

old tunes in music, ground down to suit the barrel organs of O that men would leave some of the old stones

new composers.

with mosses on them!

What has all this to do, you are asking, with Kandersteg and the Swiss hamlets? We have made a digression, it must be acknowledged, but the way back is not difficult. It is clearly manifest that picturesqueness is as desirable a quality in language and literature as it is in trees and houses. And let us remember that the utmost simplicity is perfectly consistent with this quality of picturesqueness. If we must change our language, let it not be by making it more bare, but richer and more simple. Men often mistake barrenness for simplicity, but there is no necessary relationship between the two. A bare naked man, we take it, has no more simplicity than a decently dressed gentleman. The bald, staring, red front of a brick house on a dusty street is not half so simple an object, as a pretty cottage with verandahs and honeysuckles. It is not the things which are omitted, but those which are wisely retained, that constitute true simplicity. The simplicity of words is not to be judged by the equilibrium of syllables, or the balance of vowels and consonants, nor is language to be judged as the shopkeepers would measure tape by the yard, or carpets by the figures. It must grow as the trees do, with the same variety and freedom, under the same law of picturesque and not immutable vitality.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

KANDERSTEG.-FRUTIGEN.-THE BLUMLIS ALP.-LAKE AND
VILLAGE OF THUN.

It was early enough in the afternoon to reach Thun, by taking

a char, the same evening, and I was sufficiently tired for the day, and quite well disposed for a ride through the lovely val ley of Frutigen, still far below us. A few miles from Kandersteg we found ourselves on the outer edge of the spreading farms of that village, a most sudden and romantic contrast, to one stepping down from the icy top and rough sides of the Gemmi. "Who loves to lie with me,

Here shall you see Summer and Winter conversing together, with but a wall between them, as a fair girl on an errand of mercy, might stand in the sweet open air outside a prison, and converse, through the grated black window, with a savage, shut up criminal, with wild eyes and matted hair. By and by the savage will break prison, and come down into the grassy plains, but this is not his season of liberty. You can talk with him, and hear his fierce voice, and look at his icy fingers, without his touching you.

Turning from Kandersteg and the Gemmi, you overlook at once the long descending vale, all the way to where it ends at Frutigen, with the spires and white houses of that village shining in the distant evening sun. Is not the view quite enchant ing? Nearly at right angles with the gorge down which you are descending, lies the now concealed valley of Frutigen, one of the richest deep inclosures of the Alps. And now it opens upon us. We lose the Gemmi and the woods and roaring brooks of Kandersteg, and turn down towards the more open face of a world so beautiful.

Our drive through the vale brought us full upon the view of the snowy Blumlis Alp at sunset. What a form of majesty and glory! How he flings the flaming mantle of the evening sun down upon us, as if he were himself about to ascend in fire from earth to heaven!

"So like the Mountain, may we grow more bright,
From unimpeded commerce with the Sun,

At the approach of all-involving night."

WORDSWORTH.

BLUMLIS ALP AT SUNSET.

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Nothing earthly can be more glorious than such a revelation. Meantime, as we rode into the twilight of the Vale, there came and went, between the trees and the mountains, through which we looked into the western heavens, a sky, that seemed for a season to be growing brighter, as we were getting darker, a sky, as the same Poet describes it,

66

Bright as the glimpses of Eternity,

To saints accorded in their dying hour."

So shone the Blumlis Alp. But we had hardly done admiring the crimson tints on that grand and mighty range, when turning from this valley and passing the lovely entrance of the Simmenthal, we came upon the borders of the Lake of Thun, and beheld suddenly the full moon rising behind the snowy ranges of the Bernese Alps, and gilding them with such mild, cloudless effulgence, that nothing could be more beautiful. They were distinct and shining, and so soft and white, so grand and varied in their outlines, that the sudden vision beneath the sailing moon seemed like a trance or dream of some eternal scenery. For the horizon, and the deep air above it, glowed like a pale liquid flame, and in this atmosphere the mountains were set, like the foundations of the Celestial City. Then we had the Lake, with the moonlight reflected from it in a long line of brightness, and amidst the beauty of this scenery, our day's excursion was ended by our entrance into Thun.

Now it would scarcely be possible in all Switzerland to fill a day with a succession of scenes of more extraordinary grandeur and sublimity, softness and loveliness. God's goodness has protected us from danger, and shielded us from harm in the midst of danger, unworthy that we are of his love. How have we wished for the dear ones at home to be with us, enjoying these glories! And is not the goodness of God peculiarly displayed, in giving us materials and forms of such exciting sublimity and beauty to gaze upon in the very walls of our earthly habitation? What a grand discipline for the mind, in these mighty forms of nature, and for the heart too, if rightly improved, with its affections. These mountains are a great page in our natural theology: they speak to us of the power and