features alone when we meet them; we do not report their eyebrows, their noses, their lips, the colour of their eyes, and think we have done with them; we learn their habits, thoughts, feelings; we speak to their souls. And Nature hath a soul as well as features. But a man's own soul must be awakened within him, and not his pleasure-loving faculties and propensities merely, if he would enter into communion with the soul that is in nature. Otherwise, it is as with a vacant stare that he sees mountains, forests, bright skies, and sounding cataracts pass before him; otherwise, it is like a sleep-walker that he himself wanders among them. What is not in himself he finds not in nature; and as all study is but a discipline to call forth our immortal faculties, no good will it do the man to range through nature as a study, if his inward being be asleep, if his mind be world-rusted and insensible.

"It were a vain endeavour

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west;

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within."

And hence the extreme and melancholy beauty of that passage in John Foster's writings, where he speaks of the power of external nature as an agent in our education, and laments the inward deficiency in many minds, which prevents our "foster-mother" from being able to instil into them her sweetest, most exquisite tones and lessons. "It might be supposed,' he says, "that the scenes of nature, an amazing assemblage of phenomena, if their effect were not lost through familiarity, would have a powerful influence on all opening minds, and transfer into the internal economy of ideas and sentiment something of a character and a colour correspondent to the beauty, vicissitude, and grandeur which continually press on the senses. On minds of genius they often have this effect; and Beattie's Minstrel may be as just as it is a fascinating description of the feelings of such a mind. But on the greatest number this influence operates feebly; you will not see the process in children, nor the result in mature persons. The charms of nature are objects only of sight and hearing, not of sensibility and

INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.

13

imagination. And even the sight and hearing do not receive impressions sufficiently distinct and forcible for clear recollection; it is not therefore strange that these impressions seldom go so much deeper than the senses, as to awaken pensiveness or enthusiasm, and fill the mind with an interior permanent scenery of beautiful images at its own command. This defect of fancy and sensibility is unfortunate amidst a creation infinitely rich with grand and beautiful objects, which, imparting something more than images to a mind adapted and habituated to converse with nature, inspire an exquisite sentiment, that seems like the emanation of a spirit residing in them. It is unfortunate, I have thought within these few minutes, while looking out on one of the most enchanting nights of the most interesting season of the year, and hearing the voices of a company of persons, to whom I can perceive that this soft and solemn shade over the earth, the calm sky, the beautiful stripes of cloud, the stars and the waning moon just risen, are all blank and indifferent."

Unfortunate, indeed; for did not God design that the walls of our external abode should be, as it were, at least as the scaffolding wherewith to help to build up the inward temple of the mind, and that the silent imagery upon the one should be reflected in the thoughtful treasures and instructive galleries of the other? Nature is as a book of hieroglyphics, which the individual mind must interpret.

What can be more desirable than an interior permanent scenery of beautiful images, so formed? Much depends upon a man's inward spiritual state, which, even by itself, when its pulse beats in unison with His Spirit who rules universal nature, may supply what might have seemed an original defect of taste and sensibility. So the great metaphysician of New England, who never suspected himself, nor was suspected by others of being a poet, and whose character might have been deemed defective in its imaginative parts, was drawn, by his deep and intense communion with God and the love of his attributes, into such communion with external nature, and such sensitive experience of her loveliness, so simple and yet almost ecstatic, as Cowper himself might have envied. So certain it

is that by the cultivation of our spiritual being we discipline in the best manner our intellectual being; we come into a power of appreciating and enjoying the banquet which God hath placed before all men, but from which so many do voluntarily exclude themselves. So it is, that one traveller meets angels at every step of the way, and to him it seems as a walk in Paradise; while another meets but the outward form of things. One traveller throws a shroud over nature, another a wedding-garment; one clothes her with the carking anxieties of his own mind, another sees no beauty in her.

"A primrose by the river's brim,

Or at the cottage door,

A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more.

Not so does a mind read Nature, or listen to her teachings, whose inward sight has been purified and illumined from above. "God's excellency," says Jonathan Edwards, describing the exercises of his mind after his conversion, "God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity, and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer."

Sweet, indeed, was this frame of mind; delightful would it ever be, so to wander over God's bright world, interpreting nature by ourselves, and singing, with a low sweet voice, our praises of the Creator. Then only do we feel the beauty and the glory that is around us, when there is a mind at peace within us. Coleridge's words are as true as they are beautiful.

"O lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live;

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud;
And would we aught behold of higher worth

Than that inanimate cold world allowed

You then, kind reader, are my companion by the way, so long as you please to join me in these pages, and I shall talk with you quietly and frankly in my pilgrimage; supposing you to be a friend. If you could answer me, you might suggest a thousand thoughts, fancies, feelings, more beautiful than those I utter to you; I might find that you have a far deeper sympathy with nature than I have, and a heart singing God's praises more constantly. If, therefore, you discover any vein of thought in the conversation (which in this case I have all to myself) that pleases you, I shall be glad; if any thing that does you good, I shall be more glad; if you find any thing that displeases you, I can only say, it would be somewhat wonderful if you did not; but it is not certain, because it displeases you, that therefore it is wrong. We are going through a glorious region; I have only to wish that I could fill my journal with thoughts as grand as the mountains, and as sweet as the wild flowers. We begin with Geneva, and some of the pleasant excursions amidst the scenery around that city. Then we will visit the Vale of Chamouny, and from that spot make the tour of Mont Blanc, through the lovely Val d'Aoste in Italy. After this, we have before us the magnificent Oberland Alps, and the wonderful pass of the Splugen.

CHAPTER II.

MONT BLANC FROM GENEVA AND ITS OUTSKIRTS.

GENEVA is a spot where one may study the beauty of nature in all its changes and varieties, and where that beauty passes also into sublimity, in the mighty Jura range of mountains, and in the magnificent view of the flashing snowy Alps, with Mont

Blanc towering in the centre. There are many delightful excursions within the compass of a few hours, or a day going and returning. There is the Lake, so grand and beautiful at its other extremity, around Vevay-there is the arrowy Rhone, so blue and rapid, and its junction with the Arve, combining so many points of interest and beauty, from the heights that overlook the rivers. There are the various commanding views of Mont Blanc, especially at sunset, with the changing hues from the dazzling white to the deep rich crimson, from the crimson to the cold gray, from the gray to the pink, till the colour is lost in the dimness of evening. Then there are the golden hues of twilight shadowed in the lake, and the light vail of mist drawing across the foliage of the valley as the evening shuts in upon it. Then you continue your walk in the soft light of the moon and stars, in which the vast shadows and dark rising masses of the mountains appear so solemn, almost like spiritual existences slowly breathing into your heart a sense of eternity. How these forms of nature brood upon he soul! The powerful impression which they produce, so deep, so solemn, like great types of realities in the eternal world, is sometimes quite inexplicable. It is like the awe described in Job as falling upon the soul in the presence of an invisible Spirit. The heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place. God thundereth marvellously with his voice. He casteth the garment of his clouds around the mountains; then the bright light is gone; then the wind passeth and cleanseth them. Fair weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible majesty.

Mont Blanc is clearly visible from Geneva perhaps once in the week, or about sixty times in the year. When he is visible, a walk to the junction of the Arve and the Rhone, either by the way of the plains on the Genevan side, or by way of the heights on the side towards the south of France, affords a wonderful combination of sublimity and beauty on the earth and in the heavens. Those snowy mountain ranges, so white, so pure, so dazzling in the clear azure depths, do really look as if they belonged to another world—as if, like the faces of supernatural intelligences, they were looking sadly and stead