HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE.

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black;
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from Eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my Life, and Life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing,—there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my Soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstacy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole Sovereign of the Vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all night long,
And all night visited by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink;
Companion of the Morning Star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Coherald; wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee Parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came)

Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow, Adown enormous ravines slope amain

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice,
And stopped at once, amidst their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts?

Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full Moon? Who bade the Sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!

GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, you piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!

Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Utter forth GOD! and fill the hills with praise!

Thou, too, hoar Mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the Avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depths of clouds that vail thy breast,
Thou too, again stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

To rise before me,-Rise, O ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,

Thou dread Ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising Sun,

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!

Thanks to thee, thou noble Poet, for giving this glorious voice to Alpine nature-for so befitting and not unworthy an interpretation of Nature's own voice, in words of our own mother-tongue. Thanks to God for his grace vouchsafed to thee, so that now thou praisest Him amidst the infinite host of flaming seraphim, before the mount supreme of glory, where all the empyrean rings with angelic halleluiahs! The creation of such a mind as Coleridge's is only outdone by its redemption through the blood of the Lamb. O, who can tell the rapture of a scul

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that could give a voice for nations to such a mighty burst of praise to God in this world, when its powers, uplifted in eternity, and dilated with absorbing, unmingled, unutterable love, shall pour themselves forth in the Anthem of Redemption, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!

CHAPTER XI.

MONT BLANC FROM THE COL DE BALME.

BEFORE setting out on our pilgrimage around Mont Blanc by the passage of the Tête Noir, I must give you the notes of my experience in the parallel pass of the Col de Balme. Travellers sometimes take one of these passes, and sometimes the other, on their way into Italy by the Simplon, or across the Grand St. Bernard; but a lover of Switzerland will wish to see both. The first I visited during a very magnificent fortnight in October. From the sublime wonders of the Mer de Glace, we proceeded down the valley of Chamouny, and arrived at Argentiere, a miserable hamlet at the foot of the glacier of the same name, in the evening of October 8th. We slept at a very dirty inn, in a very dirty room, rolled up in dingy blankets, after a very meagre supper upon hard black bread for the main ingredient.

By reason of the memory of this supper, in the natural conclusion that a breakfast in the same spot would be of the same general character, we left the Auberge in the morning as soon as we got out of our blankets, at half-past five, while it was yet dark, in order to reach the resting place on the summit of the mountain at an early hour.

The Col de Balme is about seven thousand feet high, and lying as it does across the vale of Chamouny at the end towards Martigny and the valley of the Rhone, through which runs the grand route of the Simplon from Switzerland to Italy, you have from it one of the most perfect of all views both of Mont Blanc and the vale of Chamouny, with all the other mountain ridges on every side. You have, as it were, an observatory erected you, 7000 feet high, to look at a mountain 16,000.

for

There is a solitary Chalet, or traveller's Refuge, on the summit of the Col, which is kept as an inn during the travelling season, the only habitation beyond the hamlet of Argentiere. When men upon the mountains reject a poor breakfast in the hope of getting a good one, they should take all things into consideration, for they may easily go farther and fare worse. That day was the last of the keeper's staying in the Chalet during that autumn. The season was over, and he was moving down into the more habitable world, so that one day later, in our anxiety for a good breakfast, we should nearly have per ished, having found the house empty. We reached it after a sharp frosty walk of nearly three hours."

Every man ought to endeavour to shield others from the evils he has experienced himself. A truly benevolent man will always do this, and a traveller, who will not warn others of perils which he has himself encountered, is like one going through a thick wood, and letting the branches fly back in the face of those that follow him. I do therefore cut off this branch, and say, Let no traveller ever attempt upon an empty stomach such a walk as we took that morning; indeed, men in general are not so simple as to do any such thing.

Till we arrived within a quarter of an hour of the summit, the atmosphere was clear, and Mont Blanc rose to the view with a sublimity, which it seemed at every step could scarcely be rivalled, and which yet at every step was increasing. The path is a winding ascent, practicable only for mules or on foot. A North-East wind, in this last quarter of an hour, was driving the immensity of mist from the other side of the mountain over the summit, enveloping all creation in a thick frosty fog, so that when we got to the solitary house, we were surrounded by an ocean of cold gray cloud, that left neither mountain nor the sun itself distinguishable. And such, thought we, is the end of all our morning's starvation, perils, and labours; not to see an inch before us; all this mighty prospect, for which alone one might worthily cross the Atlantic, hidden from us, and quite shut out! We could have wept perhaps, if we had not been too cold and too hungry. Our host burned up the remainder of his year's supply of wood, to get us a fire, and then

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most hospitably provided us with a breakfast of roasted potatoes, whereby all immediate danger of famishing was deferred to a considerable distance. But our bitter disappointment in the fog was hard to be borne, and we sat brooding and mourning over the gloomy prospect for the day, and wondering what we had best do with ourselves, when suddenly, on turning towards the window, Mont Blanc was flashing in the sunshine.

Such an instantaneous and extraordinary revelation of splendour we never dreamed of. The clouds had vanished, we could not tell where, and the whole illimitable vast of glory in this the heart of Switzerland's Alpine grandeurs was disclosed; the snowy Monarch of Mountains, the huge glaciers, the jagged granite peaks, needles, and rough enormous crags and ridges congregated and shooting up in every direction, with the long beautiful Vale of Chamouny visible from end to end, far beneath us, as still and shining as a picture! Just over the longitudinal ridge of mountains on one side was the moon in an infinite depth of ether; it seemed as if we could touch it; and on the other the sun was exulting as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. The clouds still sweeping past us, now concealing, now partially vailing, and now revealing the view, added to its power by such sudden alternations.

Far down the vale floated in mid air beneath us a few fleeces of cloud, below and beyond which lay the valley, with its villages, meadows, and winding paths, and the river running through it like a silver thread. Shortly the mists congregated away beyond this scene, rolling masses upon masses, penetrated and turned into fleecy silver by the sunlight, the whole body of them gradually retreating over the south-western end and barrier of the valley. In our position we now saw the different gorges in the chain of Mont Blanc lengthwise, Charmontiere, Du Bois, and the Glacier du Bosson protruding its whole enorme from the valley. The grand Mulet, with the vast snow-depths and crevasses of Mont Blanc were revealed to us. That sublime summit was now for the first time seen in its solitary superiority, at first appearing round and smooth, white and glittering with perpetual snow, but as the sun in his higher path cast shadows from summit to summit, and revealed ledges and