rent, which had worn for him the channel, and following its plainer and more open course, he was extricated and saved!

Not longer ago than 1821, M. Mouron, a clergyman from Vevay, lost his life in visiting the lower glacier. He was not without a guide, but not being tied to him, fell into one of the yawning crevices in the ice, a gulf of near 700 feet in depth, and must have been killed instantly. Twelve days afterward the body of the unfortunate traveller was found and brought up to the day by tying a guide to a rope, and letting him down into the abyss with a lantern. After several attempts of this nature, the persevering hunter, though exhausted by the want of air, succeeding in attaching the corpse to his own body. A watch and purse found upon it redeemed the guide from the murderous suspicions which had rested upon him, and the dead traveller was buried in the parish church. There is great danger in walking upon or along the sharp edges of the almost fathomless gulfs in these glaciers. You may think yourself very careful, but then you are to remember also the inevitable fatal consequences of a single slip, or of one false step, or even of an uncertain movement. There are sometimes similar situations in life, where a man's path, be it wrong or right, leads across great dangers, and one false or presumptuous step is the misery of a life-time. A decision, which it takes but an instant to make, it may cost years to recover from. A man is a fool, who ventures amidst such hazards, except at the call of truth and duty.

CHAPTER XIX.

Pass of the Scheideck to Meyringen.

I FIND that I have recorded the scenes of this day in my journal, as having been so varied and so beautiful as to be almost fatiguing. The feeling of fatigue is gone; I do not at all remember it; but the sense of beauty is eternal. We started from Grindlewald early, and visit the Upper Glacier. There is a little lake of water at its margin, a crystal cup as it were, where the glacier, the mountains and the heavens are reflected with wonderful depth and beauty. An old man met us, who acts as guide into the glacier, and who told us he had twenty-four children, ten by his first wife, and fourteen by his second. He was a droll old fellow, this ice guide, looking indeed immeasurably old, but entering with a great deal of youthful cheerfulness into the blithesome humor of the young travellers about him. Under his guidance we entered a cavern in the glacier, a deep crystal ravine, high enough to advance upright, without touching the pointed roof, winding quite a distance into the body of the glacier, whose superincumbent mountain masses will one day crush it. The ice-walls are of an exquisite and almost perfectly transparent emerald or azure, smooth as glass, and dripping with water as cold as the ice itself. It was a hazardous position for the traveller, for the roof of this cavern of azure ice is sure to fall, and it might as well fall while we were there, as at any other time, but we entered and came forth in safety. An entombment alive in such a sepulchre would have been far worse than a fall of ten thousand feet among the icy precipices.

It is impossible to say what it is that gives to the ice of these glaciers so beautiful a color. It is this partly which makes them so much more beautiful than those of Chamouny; at the same time, that their peaks and minarets are so varied, their depths so

enormous, and the step from them into the depths of an intense summer verdure so sudden and startling. They are a forest of icebergs, that have marched down to bid defiance to the forest of firs. From the height of the Grand Scheideck the glacier is a most magnificent object, as also are the glittering mountain barriers, silent, stern, and awful, that enclose it. How different your feelings when you are in the depths of the Valley, with the mountains shutting you in and keeping watch over you, looking down upon you with their grand and awful countenances, and those which you experience when you ascend so high as to command both them and your former position in one view, when you rise to a point, whence you can look in among them, count and compare their masses, and confront their brightness from their foundations to their topmost summits. But you must have fine weather. Scarce one feature of all this glory is to be seen, if you are travelling in the mist, if the clouds are low, or the rain is pouring.

It is like the progress of the soul in the study of divine truth. Your atmosphere must be clear, the sun shining. There are days when clouds cover everything, days of rain, and days of mist, and seasons of tremendous tempest. When you are in the valley, it does not make so much difference. There is a portion of truth, which is visible at all times, green grass, still waters, quiet meadows, though you may not see a single mountain summit. Down in such a quiet depth, the great mysterious truths of the system that surrounds you, overshadow you and shut you in. But if you would see their glory, there is much labor of the soul needed; you must toil upwards, you must have bright weather in the soul, and by and by you gain a point, where you survey the mighty system; its glittering masses and ranges stretch off below, above, around you; its sky-pointing summits pierce the upper depths of heaven; here you must have faith, you must be somewhat with John in Patmos, in the Spirit; for if the mist is around you, you can see nothing, but if the sun is shining, what an infinitude of glory opens to your view!

While on the Grand Scheideck, we enjoyed the sight of a most beautiful Avalanche; it was the extreme of beauty, but without the sublimity of those we have witnessed the day before. If this had been all that we had seen, we should have deemed the de

scriptions sometimes given to be altogether exaggerated. The traveller in Switzerland is unfortunate, who does not see a genuine avalanche on a grand scale. But this was very beautiful; first a sudden jet from the mountain, like a rocket of white smoke, then the fall of the whole mass of ice and snow with a cloud rising from it, and a rush of small thunder, like the roar of a waterfall.

From the Grand Scheideck down into the Valley of Hasli at Meyringen, the journey is one of indescribable, and to a man that knows nothing of Alpine scenery, inconceivable magnificence. It is true that the prospect before you, as you pass down towards Rosenlaui, is not so remarkable for its grandeur, as the scenes you have already passed through; but behind you, in the evening sun, the way is a perspective of lengthening glory, where the snowy mountains, seen through the forests of firs, and overhanging them, floating, as it were, in a heaven of golden light, give to the eye a vision of contrasts and splendors, the like of which may possibly no where else be presented.

Such is sometimes the difference between experience and anticipation. A man's early life is often so much pleasanter and more prosperous than his late, that the retrospect looks full of rich and mellow scenes, lovely remembrances in soft enchanting colors, while the prospect is destitute of beauty, or sometimes is filled with foreboded tempests. Many a man in the decline of life seems going down into gloom from a mountain-top of glory, and all the light of his existence shines to him from behind. But this cannot be the case with a Christian. The brightest prospect is before him. That man is happy who loves to dwell upon the future, upon what is in reserve for him. That man is happy, who sees, over the storms of his past life, a bow of promise, created by a setting sun, that is to rise in glory. A guilty man cannot love to dwell upon the past, unless he be a penitent man, a man of faith, who sees in the past the commencement and prophecy of a better future. The saying of the ancient moralist was uttered without much knowledge of its whole meaning:

"Hoc est vivere bis Vita posse priore frui."

"Tis living twice,

To enjoy past life.”

For, who can enjoy his past life, unless the light of the Cross be shining upon it? No man can do it, without some great and dreadful delusion, for the only light of hope, or material of goodness and blessedness in the Past, comes from the Cross of Christ. But where that is shining, how it floods the mountain passes of our existence with glory!