from their summits the goal to which their wishes and exertions have been long anxiously directed! Xenophon affords a fine instance of the power of this union of association and admiration over the mind and heart. The ten thousand Greeks, after encountering innumerable difficulties and dangers in the heart of an enemy's country, at length halted at the foot of a lofty mountain. On arriving at its summit, the sea unexpectedly burst in all its grandeur on their astonished sight; the joy was universal; the soldiers could not refrain from tears; they embraced their generals and captains with the most extravagant delight; it seemed to them that they had already reached the places of their nativity; and in imagination they again sat beneath the vines that shaded their paternal dwellings. On the other hand, the soldiers of Hannibal shrunk back with awe and dismay on coming to the foot of that vast chain, once believed to connect Italy with the pole. The sight of those enormous ramparts, whose heads, capped with eternal snow, seemed to touch the heavens, struck a sensible dejection into the hearts of the soldiers. Hannibal's force, at this time, consisted of 38,000 infantry, 8000 horse, sevenand-thirty elephants, and a long train of horses for carriage and burden. It was in the middle of autumn; the trees were yellow with the fading leaf; a vast quantity of snow had blocked up many of the passes; and the only objects reminding them of humanity were a few miserable cottages perched on the points of inaccessible cliffs, flocks perishing with cold, and men of hairy bodies and savage aspect. On the ninth day, after conquering unnumbered difficulties, the army reached the summit. The consternation among the troops now became so evident, that Hannibal thought proper to notice it. Halting, therefore, at a point of the mountains from whence there was a widely extended view of Italy, he pointed out to them the luxuriant plains of Piedmont, E which lay like a large map before them. He magnified the beauty of those regions, and reminded them how near they were to putting a period to all their difficulties; assuring them that one or two battles would give them possession of the Roman capital. This speech, filled with such brilliant promises, and its effect heightened by the sight of Italian landscape, inspired the dejected soldiers with fresh vigour and alacrity; and, setting forward, they soon arrived in the plains below, not far from Turin: "Then o'er the weeping vales destruction hurl'd, On the 6th of May, in the year 1800, NAPOLEON, then First Consul of France, set off from Paris to assume the command of the French army of Italy. On the thirteenth he arrived in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. Having reviewed his troops, he pursued his march along the northern shore of the Lake of Geneva, and, passing through Vevey, Villeneuve, and Aigle, arrived at Martinach, situated near a fine sweep of the Rhone, not far from its confluence with the Durance. From this place the modern Hannibal passed through Burg and St. Brenchir; and, after great toil, difficulty, and danger, gained, with his whole army, the summit of the Great St. Bernard. The road up this mountain is one of the utmost difficulty, and the scenes which it presents are as magnificent as any in Switzerland. Rocks. gulfs, avalanches, or precipices, presented themselves at every step. Not a soldier but was alternately petrified with horror and captivated with delight; at one moment feeling himself a coward, at the next animated with the inspirations of a hero. Arrived at the apex of that tremendous mountain, and anticipating nothing but dangers and accidents in their descent, on coming to a sudden turning of the road they beheld tables covered, as it were by magic, with every kind of necessary refreshment. The monks of St. Bernard had prepared the banquet. Bending with humility and grace, those holy fathers besought their military guests to partake of their humble fare. The army feasted, returned tumultuous thanks to their entertainers, and passed on. Shortly after this event, the battle of Marengo decided the fate of Italy, when Napoleon declared the Alps annihilated. VALLEYS. Ir abrupt and gigantic mountains, and, more than all, the ocean, elevate the mind, and exalt it above mortality, the woody dingle, the deep, romantic glen, the rocky valley, and the wide, rich, fascinating vale, associating ideas of rural comfort and of peaceful enjoyment, of cheerful industry, robust health, and tranquil happiness, draw us from subjects too high for human thought, chain us to terrestrial scenes, and enchant us with such magic spells "that earth seems heaven." Vale of Tempe.-No country abounds more in those characters in which Nature delights to speak to the imagination than Greece. Her mountains were not more the theme of her poets than her vales, and no one of these was so celebrated as that of Tempe. A Greek writer calls it "a festival for the eyes;" and the gods were believed at times to wander in it. In this enchanting valley were united the extremes of the beautiful and sublime: how beautiful, Elian has informed us; and how sublime, we may imagine from what is related by Livy; who assures us that when the Roman army was marching over one of the mountain passes leading to it, the soldiers were thrilled with horror at the awful appearance of the rocks, and the thundering noise of the cataracts. Euripides also gives a noble description of this valley, and there is scarcely an ancient poet that does not allude to it in some way or other. Not the least agreeable of its associations, however, is that arising from its having been the spot where was first discovered the art of curdling milk. Hence the fame of Aristæus and Cyrene. Statius mentions a Tempe situated in Boeotia, and Ovid another in Sicily. The Tempe of Switzerland is a valley lying in the bosom of the canton of Glarus, near the mountains of Freyburg, watered by the Linth. That of Italy, says Cicero, is the district of the Reatines. The most beautiful spot in Africa is said to be about a day's journey from the mouth of the Reiskamma; the most sublime is that seen from the Mountain of Kaka; but Vaillant calls the canton of the twenty-four rivers the Tempe of Africa. Humboldt is inclined to think the Valley of Tacoronte, among the solitudes of Mount Teneriffe, the most beautiful the world affords; but the Vale of Cashmere would seem, by its associations, to have been even more beautiful than that. It was at once the Tempe and the Elysium of the East; since it was not only celebrated for its romantic scenery, but for the learning of its Brahmins, its plane-trees and roses, and, above all, its beautiful women. 1754 it fell under the domination of the Afghauns; and in 1782, the governor oppressed it with every species of atrocity. In In the Vale of Tempe, Philip, king of Macedon, was cited to appear before the Romans to answer for his conduct; and thither the Delphians sent a deputation, consisting of the finest youths in their city, every ninth year. On arriving in the valley, they erected an altar, offered sacrifices, cut some branches from the laurels which grew there, and carried them home with a view of offering them in the temple of Apollo at Delphos. Julian, in a let ter to Libanius, says the beauties of this vale were second only to the groves of Daphne, near Antioch; and through its winding and solitary defiles Pompey retreated, after the battle of Pharsalia: parched with thirst, he threw himself upon his face and drank out of the stream. It is now a haunt for banditti; and what a haunt! a valley, lying in the bosom of mountains, shaded by the bay, the pomegranate, and the wild olive; the arbutus and the yellow jessamine; the wild vine; the evergreen oak; the Oriental plane; and the turpentine-tree, frequently festooned with different species of clematis. Dovedale.-Welsh Vales.-The scene in England which most resembles this celebrated vale is that of Dovedale, in the county of Derby. In this dale are frequently seen virgin's threads, flying in the air like fine untwisted silk, and which, falling upon plants, are discovered to be a spider's web. This web is a delicate plexus, formed in the body of the spider, and which it is able to spin out of its bowels at discretion. In certain states of the weather, the garden spider frequently darts out a thread, which flies before the wind to a considerable distance, still issuing from the bowels of the spider, which soon after mounts into the air, suspended by its own threads, and rises with those threads flying before it, thus forming what are usually called "virgin's threads." Who teaches the swallow, the woodcock, and the nightingale, to traverse the atmosphere from one climate to another, at different seasons of the year? Who directs the bee back to its hive, from a distance of many miles, when its eye can scarcely discern two inches before it? Who draws the salmon from the depths of the ocean to ascend the rivers? who the herring and the pilchard from remote seas, to deposite their spawn in climes congenial to their natures? Who shapes the course of the winds and who has pointed the magnet? The same Power, |