My next morning's walk of about three hours brought me to the celebrated Hospice of the Grand St. Bernard. Near half an hour of this journey is over ice and snow. The path circles the precipices, and crosses the torrent, and scales the declivities in such a manner, that in winter, when the deceitful masses of snow have covered the abysses, the passage must be very dangerous. A few wooden poles are stuck up here and there, to mark the way, but at such intervals, that if, in a misty day, or when the snow has covered the foot-path, you should undertake to follow them, you would certainly fall. Indeed, I do not see how there can be any passage at all in the winter, when the snow falls to such a depth, that around the building of the Hospice it is from twelve to twenty feet. Wo be to the poor traveller overtaken in a storm! How can ever escape in such a case is a marvel-but the dogs and monks have saved many a wanderer ready to perish.

any man

There are some dreary and solemn memorials of the dangers of the way, in certain little low-browed stone huts like ice-houses, planted here and there a little out of the path, the use of which a traveller would hardly conjecture in fair weather, though he might learn it from fearful experience in a storm. The guides will tell him that these are refuges in extreme peril, or in cases of death are used as temporary vaults, in which the stiffened bodies of unfortunate travellers are deposited, till they can be finally laid, with book and bell, and funeral hymns, and solemn chantings, in the strangers' burial-place at the Hospice. A man says within himself, as he stops and contemplates the rude, solitary building, What if I had been laid there? And then, as swift as thought, he is away across the ocean, and gazing in upon the happy family circle, where his place is vacant, and he thinks what misery it would make there-what a funeral and a burial there would be in the hearts of those beloved inmates, and what lasting, wasting anguish, if he should die away from home, if he should perish in the storms of his pilgrimage. He bows down his head and muses, and the faces of his home look him in the face, and those loving eyes of Mother and Sister are on tim, and he hears his name breathed at the family altar in fervent prayer. But ah, how many dangers to be encountered, how many thousand leagues of earth and ocean to be traversed, before again he can

kneel with them at hat loved altar! And who can tell whether ever again they shal all kneel there together? This will be as God pleases; but if not, shall there not be family altars in heaven —altars of praise indeed and not of prayer-but grateful altars still, where the dear family circle, so broken and wasted here, shall be gathered again, no more to be divided, in rapture, love, and praise, for ever? God grant it! This hope shall be one of our songs in this House of our Pilgrimage.

Nothing can be more beautiful than the flowers which border the snow and ice, are sprinkled over the rocks, sown in the valleys, and spring up everywhere. Where the hardiest shrubs dare not grow, these grow. The fearless little things dance over the precipices, and gem the grass like stars. I am surprised that they and the grass with them can thrive amidst such constant cold: for I plucked an icicle hanging from a rock over which the green moss and grass were hanging also, and this in the month of August. The nights are cold, but the sun has great power. The cows find pasturage in summer quite up to the Hospice.

CHAPTER XV.

Hospice of the Grand St. Bernard.

THIS is a bright, mild pearl of love and mercy set in the midst upon the icy crown of Winter. True, it was the hand of Superstition that placed it there, but also the voice and the feeling of self-denying, active benevolence were in it. Sudden and grateful to the lonely traveller, from the Alpine side, is the sight of the Hospice, for its stone steps do almost hang down over deep, precipitous gulfs, where a tourmente might bury you for ever, even with the sweet chime of the chapel-bell dying on your ear amid the tempest. So near one might come to the Refuge, and yet be lost. Storms arise almost as sudden as Indian hurricanes, and whirling mists spring up, like dense, dark fogs around a ship at sea, with jagged reefs before her: and neither by storm nor mist would one wish to be overtaken on this mountain, even in August, out of sight of the building. So might one perish at the threshold of mercy, even as the storm-o'ertaken peasant sinks down exhausted in the snow, within reach of the struggling rays of light from his own cottage window, nor wife, nor little ones, shall more behold.

If a man wishes to be cheated into a complacent regard for monastic institutions, let him read the "Ages of Faith," or go with a crust of bread and a pitcher of water to pass the day at the cloud-capped hermitage of Cintra, or sit down tired and thankful at the pleasant table of the monks of St. Bernard. Indeed, if all monasteries had been like this, there had been more summer, and less winter in the world.

Bernard said (but not the saint that founded the Hospice), "Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, præmiatur copiosius." Not to trouble my readers with

the Latin, which has doubtless decoyed many a monk into orders by its golden net-work, I shall add Wordsworth's translation of this, as follows:

"Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,

More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed,
More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains, withal,
A brighter crown: "-

Every line of it, alas! as every word of the Latin, false; proved so by the reality and by history; yet, as Wordsworth says, a potent call, that hath cheated full oft the heart's desire after purity and happiness. As if a man could shut out his depravity, by shutting himself up in a cell! There is no place, neither in the clouds, nor under the earth, nor on the mountains, where Satan cannot find some mischief for idle hearts to do.

The sagacious dogs of the Hospice make as good monks as their masters. Noble creatures they are, but they greeted me with a furious bark, almost as deep as thunder, being nearly the first object and salutation I encountered, after passing the crowd of mules waiting out of doors for travellers. The dogs are somewhat lean and long, as if their station were no sinecure, and not accompanied by quite so good quadrupedal fare, as their labors are entitled to. Probably the cold, keen air keeps them thin. They are tall, large-limbed, deep-mouthed, broad-chested, and looking like veteran campaigners. The breed is from Spain, and most extraordinary stories are told of their great sagacity of intellect, and keenness of scent, yet not incredible to one who has watched the psychology of dogs even of inferior natures. They are faithful sentinels in summer, good Samaritans in the winter.

But I had almost asked, Why do I speak of the Summer? For the deep little lake before the Hospice, though on the sunny Italian side, does not melt till July, and freezes again in September, and in some seasons, I am told, is not free from ice at any time. And the snow falls almost every day in the year. They had had three or four inches two nights before I reached the Hospice. And when the snow melts, it reveals to the waiting ey us of the inmates nothing but the bare ridgy backs and sharp granite needles, crags,

and almost perpendicular slopes of the mountains. Not a tree is to be seen anywhere, nor a sign of vegetable life, nor a strag. gling shrub of any kind, but only patches of moss, and grass, and the flowers, that spring up by a wonderful, sweet, kindly impulse out of this dreariness, like instructive moral sentiments in the hearts of the roughest and most unenlightened men. The flowering tufts of our humanity often grow, like the Iceland moss, beneath the snow, and must be sought in the same manner. These earnest, patient, quick-coming, long-enduring little flowers on the Grand St. Bernard, are an emblem of the welcome kindness of the monks. They remind one, as the foot treads among them, or as you kneel down to admire and gather them, of Wordsworth's very beautiful lines, very memorable :

"The primal duties shine aloft like stars,

The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers."

Or better still, they remind one of Cowper's sensible and beautiful couplets :

"Truths, that the learn'd pursue with eager thought,

Are not important always, as dear bought;

Proving, at last, though told in pompous strains,

A childish waste of philosophic pains;

But truths, on which depend our main concern,
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn,
Shine by the side of every path we tread,
With such a lustre, he that runs may read."

With these good monks the charities and primal duties are the same, and they shine like stars, and are scattered like flowers, all the year round. And it is at no little sacrifice that the post is maintained, for the climate is injurious to health, and the dwellers here are cut off from human society during the greater part of the year. It is true that the peopling of the Hospice with an order of religieuses is now somewhat a work of supererogation, since a family with a few hardy domestics could keep up an auberge sufficient for travellers the year round, and at much less expense; nevertheless, the institution is one of great benevolence, and the