gulf, the timber being cut and trimmed for the purpose, was thus swung high in its cradle of air to the place of landing for transportation.

How tremendous would a falling Avalanche be in this place! But here the mountains, one would think, are too steep for the snow and ice to congregate in sufficient masses.

In a dreadful storm in 1834, the river being dammed up by the fragments of rock and timber wedged into the jagged narrow cleft, the water rose near four hundred feet. It poured down the gorge as if an ocean had burst into it, but its ravages were committed principally in the vales above and below the Via Mala. At the village of Splugen twelve houses were swept away, so sudden and violent was the inundation, in some of which, an hour before, the peasants had been quietly seated at their supper. The same terrific storm and inundation covered some other of the valleys with a half century of desolation.

At Andeer I rejoined my friend, whose care had provided a good dinner, besides making all arrangements for getting on to Splugen for the night. There was nothing for me to do but to sit down and rest myself. I had passed and repassed almost the whole of the Via Mala, and would have been glad, if possible, to return through the same stupendous pass the next day, but our course was direct for Italy.

CHAPTER XL.

Natural Theology of the Splugen.

Now, dear friend, what thinkest thou of the moral of this stupendous scene in the preceding chapter? Dost thou set down this mountain-rift, in thy natural theology, as a chapter of the scars and vestiges of sin, one of the groans of nature in this nether world, wrung out by man's fall? Or is it to thee an instructive, exalting, exciting scene of Power, magnificently grand, almost as if thou hadst witnessed the revealed Arm of Omnipotence, and lifting thy heart, mind, soul, thy whole being, up to God?

Methinks you answer, that if God meant the world to be a great solemn palace for the teaching of his children, on the very walls of which there should be grand inscriptions and hieroglyphics productive of great thoughts, rousing the mind from slumber, rearing the imagination with a noble discipline, he would have scattered here and there just such earthquake-rifts of power and grandeur. We are immortal children in the school-house of our infancy. It is not necessary to suppose that every scar on the face of Nature, deep entrenched and jagged, is an imperfection or a mark of wrath; for it may be a scene, where an angel passing by would stop and admire it as a symbol of God's power, a faint comma, as it were, in the revelation of his attributes; it may be a scene, which awakens great thoughts in an angel's bosom, as a hidden lowly daisy does the more gentle ones; the daisy being a flower, which an angel might stop to gaze at as an emblem of sweetness and humility.

And in this view, as a hieroglyphic of Power, this fathomless dread gorge is also a proof of Love. It was Love that appointed it as an emblem of Power. So is the great wide Sea, and that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to play therein. So are the

volcanoes, the ice-continents, and the burning deserts.

All may

And

be works of Love, though they show nothing but Power. even if it be Power in exercise for the avenging and punishment of sin, even then it is Love; for every lesson of God's wrath is Love, and where there is sin, wrath is a proof of Love, of Love saving by wrath the lookers on from rushing into wrath.

There are places in our world, where we may suppose that beings from another planet, conversant with the history of ours, would stop and gaze solemnly, and speak to each other of God's retributive justice. Such is that black dead sea with arid shores, that rolls where Sodom stood. If angels went to take Lot from the city that was to be burned, how often, when angels pass the place, scarred now with retribution, do they think with shuddering of the evil of sin! Yet even that retribution was invested with the atmosphere of Love, and had not God been Love, he might have let Sodom stand, he might have let the guilty go unpunished. If God were not Love, then there might be no future retribution of misery to the wicked. But justice only does the work of Love, and Love works for the purity and blessedness of the universe. Where there is sin, Love without wrath would only be connivance with iniquity.

It is a fact therefore, that in your natural theology, sin being given, pain is absolutely necessary, in order to prove the benevolence of God. So that the problem and the answer might be stated thus: Given, the fact of sin, how will you demonstrate that God is a good being? Answer: Only by proving that God punishes sin. In this view, the misery with which earth is filled, so far from being a difficulty in God's government, goes to establish it as God's. A malevolent being would have let men sin without making them miserable; therefore, God could not be proved benevolent unless, in a world of sin, there were the ingredient of misery.

Then as to the other problem: Given, a race of sinful creatures: What sort of a world shall they be placed in? You would certainly answer, Not a world of unmingled softness and beauty, not a Paradise of enjoyment, not the early and undiseased Eden of innocence and love, but a world, in which there shall be enough of storm and tempest, enough of painful climate,

and of the curse of barrenness, and of the element of disaster and ruin, to show God's frown and. evident curse for sin; but yet enough of the means of enjoyment, if rightly used, to draw men to industry, to show God's kindness and love, and enough of beauty and sublimity to impress, delight and educate the soul. It is just a world so mingled, a world scarred with evil, as well as bright with good, that we, a sinful race, do really inhabit.

The view which men take of the argument for the goodness of God from the works of creation will vary much according to their own states of mind. A man suffering the consequences of sin, or a man under a cloud of care, and destitute of faith, or a man burdened with present miseries, without any consolation from divine grace, would see things very differently from a calm mind, a quiet mind, a happy mind, a mind at peace with God. The Universe takes its coloring from the hue of our own souls; and so, in a measure, does the solution of the question whether the Universe, so far as we are acquainted with it, proves a God of love. A heart that loves God, and rejoices in the happiness that fills the world around it, will say instinctively that it does, and will sympathize with God in his own feelings of delight in the happiness of creation. A misanthropic heart, a sinful heart, a rebellious heart, will perhaps be disposed to say No, or will overlook, and cannot understand and appreciate, the power of the argument. For a mind disposed to make difficulty, plenty of difficulty exists. For a mind humbly disposed to learn of God, there is confirmation of the soul's faith, even in difficulties themselves, which are as buttresses supporting the spire that sublimely points to heaven.

CHAPTER XLI.

Pass of the Splugen into Italy.-The Cardinell and Macdonald's army.Campo Dolcino and Chiavenna.

FROM the little wild village of Splugen, overhanging the young Rhine-river, where there is an excellent mountain inn, having supped, slept, and breakfasted, 4711 feet above the sea, you take your departure at pleasure for either of the two Alpine passes into Italy, the Splugen or the Bernardin. Both of them carry you across scenes of the greatest wildness, winter, and sublimity, into almost perpetual loveliness and summer. You pass the snowy recesses,

where Nature holds the nursling rivers to her bosom of glaciers, feeding her infants with ice; you go down into Elysian fields, where the brooks sparkle and dance, like laughing children amidst flowers and sunshine. The whirlwind of war has poured across each of these passes, in the most terrific of the seasons, driven by the French General Lecourbe at the Bernardin, and by Macdonald at the perilous gorge of the Cardinell. They marched in the midst of fierce tempests and falling avalanches, that swept whole phalanxes as into the depths of hell, as if the avenging genii of Switzerland were up in arms, the ministers of wrath against the oppressor. The pass of the Splugen, rising more than 2000 feet above the village of Splugen, and 6814 above the sea, brings you out at Chiavenna and the Lake of Como. That of the Bernardin, rising 7115 feet above the sea, and about 2400 above Splugen, opens upon Bellinzona and the Lakes of Maggiore and Lugano.

We take the Splugen road, and following it through four miles and three quarters of laborious ascent, come to the narrow mountain ridge, which traces the boundary line between Switzerland and Lombardy. The steepest ascent is effected by a great number of zigzags, so gradual, that they turn almost parallel on one another. The pedestrian will do well to scale across them, as