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now be dwelt upon, inasmuch as the weath- | very bottom of the principal one. er rendered them all futile.

VIII.

The as

pect of this smaller chasm from its bottom to its top proves to demonstration that water had in former ages worked there as a navigator. But it was regarding the sides of the great chasm that I needed instruetion, and from its edge I could see nothing to satisfy me. I therefore stripped and waded until a point was reached in the centre of the river which commanded an excellent view of both sides of the gorge. Below me, on the left-hand side, was a jutting cliff, which caused the Aar to swerve from its direct course, and had to bear the thrust of the river. From top to bottom this cliff was polished, rounded, and scooped. There was no room for doubt. The river which now runs so deeply down had once been above. It has been the delver of its own channel through the barrier of the Kirchet.

IN the summer of 1866, I first went to Engsteln, one of the most charming spots in the Alps. It had at that time a double charm, for the handsome young widow who kept the inn supplemented by her kindness within doors the pleasures extracted from the outer world. A man named Maurer, of Meyringen, was my guide for a time. We climbed the Titlis, going straight up it from the Joch Pass, in the track of a scampering chamois which showed us the way. The Titlis is a very noble mass-one of the few which, while moderate in height, bear a lordly weight of snow. The view from the summit is exceedingly fine, and on it I repeated with a hand spectroscope the observations of M. Janssen on the absorption bands of aqueous vapours. On the day after this ascent I quitted Engsteln, being drawn towards the Wellhorn and Wetterhorn, both of which, as seen from Engsteln, came out with inexpressible nobleness. The upper dome of heaven was of the deepest blue, while only the faintest lightening of the colour towards the horizon indicated lay upon my plaid under an impervious the augmented thickness of the atmosphere in that direction. The sun was very hot, but there was a clear rivulet at hand, deepening here and there into pebbled pools, into which I plunged at intervals, causing my guide surprise, if not anxiety. For he shared the common superstition that plunging into cold water is dangerous. The danger, and a very serious one it is, is to plunge into water when cold. The strongest alone can then bear immersion without damage.

This year I subjected the famous Finsteraarschlucht to a closer examination than ordinary. The earthquake theory already adverted to was prevalent regarding it, and I wished to see whether any evidences existed of aqueous erosion. It will be remembered that the Schlucht or gorge is cut through a great barrier of limestone rock called the Kirchet, which throws itself across the valley of Hasli, about three-quarters of an hour's walk above Meyringen. The plain beyond the barrier, on which stands the hamlet of Imhof, is formed of the sediment of an ancient lake of which the Kirchet constituted the dam. This dam is now cut through for the passage of the Aar, forming one of the noblest gorges in Switzerland. Near the summit of the Kirchet is a house with a signboard inviting the traveller to visit the Aarenschlucht, a narrow lateral gorge which runs down to the

I went on to Rosenlaui, proposing to climb the neighbouring mountains in succession. In fact I went to Switzerland in 1866 with a particular hunger for the heights. But the weather thickened before Rosenlaui was reached, and on the night following the morning of my departure from Engsteln I

pine, and watched as wild a thunderstorm and as heavy a downpour of rain as I had ever seen. Most extraordinary was the flicker on cliffs and trees, and most tremendous was the detonation succeeding each discharge. The fine weather came thus to an end, and the next day I gave up the Wetterhorn for the ignoble Faulhorn. Here the wind changed, the air became piercingly cold, and on the following morning heavy snow-drifts buttressed the doors, windows, and walls of the inn. We broke away, sinking at some places to the hips in snow. A thousand feet made all the difference; a descent of this amount carrying us from the bleakest winter into genial summer. My companion held on to the beaten track, while I sought a rougher and more direct one to the Scheinigeplatte. We were solitary visitors there, and I filled the evening with the " Story of Elizabeth," which some benevolent traveller had left at the hotel.

Thence we dropped down to Lauterbrunnen, went up the valley to the little inn at Trechslawinen, and crossed the Petersgrat the following day. The recent precipitation had cleared the heavens and reloaded the heights. It was, perhaps, the splendour of the weather and purity of the snows, aided by the subjective effect due to contrast with a series of most dismal days, that made me think the Petersgrat so noble a

standpoint for a view of the mountains. The hung a cloud, which we at first hoped horizontal extent was vast, and the group- would melt before the strengthening sun, ing magnificent. The undoubted monarch but which instead of melting became denser. of this unparagoned scene was the Weiss- Now and then an echoing rumble of the horn, and this may have rendered me par-wind warned us that we might expect rough tial in my judgment, for men like to see handling above. We persisted, however, what they love exalted. At Platten we and reached a considerable height, unwillfound shelter in the house of the curé.ing to admit that the weather was against Next day we crossed the Lotschsattel, and us; until a more savage roar and a ruder swept round by the Aletsch glacier to the Æggischhorn.

shake than ordinary by the wind caused us to halt, and look more earnestly and anxHere I had the pleasure of meeting a very iously into the darkening atmosphere. Snow ardent climber, who entertains peculiar no- began to fall, and we felt that we must tions regarding guides. He deems them, yield. The wind did not increase, but the and rightly so, very expensive, and he also snow thickened, and fell in heavy flakes. feels pleasure in trying his own powers. I Holding on in the dimness to the medial would admonish him that he may go too far moraine, we managed to get down the glain this direction, and probably his own ex- cier, and cleared it at a practicable point; perience has by this time forestalled the whence, guided by the cliffs which flanked admonition. Still there is much in his feel- our right, and which became visible only ing which challenges sympathy; for if skill, when we came almost into contact with courage, and strength are things to be cul- them, we cut the proper track to the hotel. tivated in the Alps, they are, within certain Though my visits to the Alps already limits, best exercised and developed in the numbered thirteen, I had never gone as absence of guides. And if the real climb-far southward as the Italian lakes. The ers are ever to be differentiated from the perfectly unmanageable weather of July crowd, it is only to be done by dispensing 1866 caused me to cross with Mr. Girdlewith professional assistance. But no man stone into Italy, in the hope that a respite without natural aptitude and due training of ten or twelve days might improve the would be justified in undertaking anything temper of the mountains. We walked of this kind, and it is an error to suppose across the Simplon to the village of the that the necessary knowledge can be ob- same name, and took thence the diligence tained in one or two summers in the Alps. to Domo d'Ossola and Baveno. The atClimbing is an art, and those who wish to mospheric change was wonderful; and still cultivate it on their own account ought to the clear air which we enjoyed below was give themselves sufficient previous practice the self-same air that heaped clouds and in the company of first-rate guides. This snow upon the mountains. It came across would not shut out expeditions of minor the heated plains of Lombardy charged with danger now and then without guides. But moisture, but the moisture was in the transwhatever be the amount of preparation, parent condition of true vapour, and hence real climbers must still remain select men. invisible. Tilted by the mountains, the Here, as in every other sphere of human ac-air rose, and as it expanded it became tion, whether intellectual or physical, as indeed among the guides themselves, real eminence falls only to the lot of few.

chilled, and as it became chilled it discharged its vapour as visible cloud, the globules of which swelled by coalescence into raindrops on the mountain flanks, or were frozen to ice-particles on their summits, the particles collecting afterwards to form flakes of snow.

From the Bel Alp, in company with Mr. Girdlestone, I made an attack upon the Aletschhorn. We failed. The weather as we started was undecided, but we hoped the turn might be in our favour. We first At Baveno we halted on the margin of kept along the Alp, with the Jaggi glacier the Lago Maggiore. I could hear the lispto our right, then crossed its moraine, and ing of the waters on the shingle far into the made the trunk glacier our highway until night. My window looked eastward, and we reached the point of confluence of its through it could be seen the first warming branches. Here we turned to the right, of the sky at the approach of dawn. I rose, the Aletschhorn, from base to summit, com- and watched the growth of colour all along ing into view. We reached the true base the east. The mountains, from mere masses of the mountain, and without halting breas- of darkness projected against the heavens, ted its snow. But as we climbed, the at- became deeply empurpled. It was not as a mosphere thickened more and more. About mere wash of colour overspreading their the Nesthorn the horizon deepened to pitchy surfaces. They blent with the atmosphere darkness, and on the Aletschhorn itself as if their substance was a condensation of

the general purple of the air. Nobody was stirring at the time, and the very lap of the lake upon its shore only increased the sense of silence.

"The holy time was quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration."

In my subsequent experience of the Italian lakes, I met with nothing which affected me so deeply as this morning scene on the Lago Maggiore.

From Baveno we crossed the lake to Luino, and went thence to Lugano. At Belaggio, on the junction of the two branches of the Lake of Como, we halted a couple of days. Como itself we reached in a small sailing-boat- the sail being supplemented by oars. There we saw the statue of Volta - a prophet justly honoured in his own country. From Como we went to Milan. The object of greatest interest there is, of course, the cathedral; a climber could not forego the pleasure of getting up among the statues which crowd its roof, and of looking thence towards Monte Rosa. The distribution of the statues magnified the apparent vastness of the pile; still the impression made on me by this great edifice was one of disappointment. Its front seemed to illustrate an attempt to cover meanness of conception by profusion of adornment. The

interior, however, notwithstanding the cheat of the ceiling, is exceedingly grand.

From Milan we went to Orta, where we had a plunge into the lake. We crossed it subsequently, and walked on to Varallo: thence by Fobello over a country of noble beauty to Ponte Grande in the Val Apsasca. Thence again by Macugnaga, over the deep snow of the Monte Moro, reaching Mattmark in drenching rain. The temper of the northern slopes did not appear to have improved during our absence. We returned to the Bel Alp, fitful triumphs of the sun causing us to hope that we might still have fair play upon the Aletschhorn. But the day after our arrival snow fell so heavily as to cover the pastures for 2,000 feet below the Bel Alp, introducing a partial famine among the herds. They had eventually to be driven below the snow line. Avalanches were not unfrequent on slopes which a day or two previously had been covered with grass and flowers. In this condition of things Mr. Milman, Mr. Girdlestone, and myself climbed the Sparrenhorn, and found its heavy-laden Kamm almost as hard as that of Monte Rosa. Occupation out of doors was, however, insufficient to fill the mind, so I wound my plaid around my loins, and in my cold bedroom studied “Mozley upon Miracles."

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path," a "facilis descensus," down the middle, and not up again.

But perhaps the Cardinal Sin-dances, in spite of the present state of Parisian society, are not really characteristic. Possibly none of them are illustrations of wickedness, such as might be, and sometimes, if not usually, are, presented to the public in the modern ballet. It may be that pride, avarice, luxury, and so on, as the titles of polkas and waltzes, no more imply immorality than Sebastopol, Magenta, and Solferino, in the same connection, do carnage. For aught anybody knows, they express nothing worse than the condition of mind from which words that mean the most solemn things are commonly employed, by some composers, in the nomenclature of dance-music-idiotic frivolity. Punch.

A MOTION has been made in the North-German Parliament that Departments of War, Marine, Foreign Affairs, and Commerce, with a Minister at the head of each, be established for the Confederation.

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From Fraser's Magazine.

A DEAF AND DUMB SERVICE.

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Ir is Sunday. We are in the familiar lecture-room of the Polytechnic (the small one), where the portly gentleman makes dark science lucid, and where other entertainers' strive laudably to get fame within their grasp. We have the identical stretched white sheet before us, on which their phantasmagorias have disported; we have the identical red curtains decking it, from which they have discharged their smiles and bowings; we have the identical foot-lights lighted that have made their borrowed cheek-bloom natural, and thrown archness into glances that would otherwise have fallen tame. There is the joy exciting sheet; there are the dim red curtains; here, within a foot-thrust, are the glowing tin-backed lamps.

resorts to a hum and ha. New-comers, however, passing along the narrow clearing to get to their own form, may blot a word out for them. They have that difficulty. And so we see them craning their necks, and throwing aside their hands, and in that way saving the cutting of the thread of their discourse; but all the moving hands at last drop down tranquilly. There is mute attention (only too literally) by all eyes being turned to one spot, for the minister for the day is stepping from behind the red curtain, and walking across the platform to his simple table-desk.

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The regularly appointed clergyman is a speaking person' (as the deaf and dumb call nous autres), but, as if to intensify the interest of to-day, he has gone to be interpreter at a deaf and dumb wedding, and this lay-preacher who is here to take his Is there anything more? Yes. There is place has never heard a sound nor uttered a black-board, on which is chalked where one, and is as deaf and as dumb as are all to find the lessons for the day, and the col- his congregation. This makes no alteration lect, and the text; and there is a pretty whatever in the manner of the service. carved oak table, with a large prayer-book The chaplain would have to be voiceless and Bible on it, and by its side a simple here, and to adapt himself to the wants of cane-bottomed chair; but with these few his people, and our present friend can do items the catalogue is done. About forty no more. deaf and dumb are here, though, apparently professional gown and bands, this has quite content. More keep arriving, too, none; but neither needs he any. There is with no effort to stop the shuffling of their a dignity about him, an earnestness, a sofeet (since to themselves it has no noise, lemnity, that want no silk to be made efand to others no annoyance), and with no fective, and that come straight from his own head turned when we (and only we!) hear imprisoned soul. the swinging of the door. Among them He has to act everything, as it were (since are old men and children, young men and the system he uses is a mixture of the spellmaidens; and when they are seated and ing with our old child-learnt dumb alphabet, look around for their acquaintances, their and the representation of words, and even faces light up on recognition, and their fin- phrases, by expressive signs), and he is so gers begin a rapid speech. They might be moved by the poetry of the thoughts he is members of Parliament or committee peo- communicating, his head, and arms, and ple-all things are with them so literally whole body are idealized by it, and he is a motions,' and there is such a perpetual picture in every attitude that he assumes. 'show of hands.' It is droll, too, to see No Oriental could give a painter or a their manual conversations going on, quite scluptor more delight. He is elevating his unconcernedly, from opposite sides of the hands now to Heaven in close appeal; and room. To us they might be proposing' now he has no hope left of mercy, and (and accepting' instead of seconding) stands there abased. He is resignation, in Sanscrit or old Greek, so utterly incom- alarm, hope, and tender love; he is gratiprehensible are their swift manipulations; tude, humiliation, anger, rapture; he turns but every one else, behind and foremost, from adoration to hate, from joy to despair; can disentangle every word! And yet if he supplicates, he mourns, he worships, he these distinguished (or at any rate, dis- disdains, and all with the swiftness and tinct) movers got up into a dark corner, beauty of a man with a fairy gift. All the they would be dumb twice-stricken, for congregation are standing with him for a they could not see! They must have the prayer (they cannot kneel, nor yet bow their light shine upon them, and let their actions heads, nor do anything that interferes with be seen before men. They are bound to the freedom of their eyes), and his fingers be public speakers,' (would a sentence are making incessant movements - rapidly, executed on little fingers only, amount to magically, madly. and are adding to his whispering, we wonder?) though-and expression considerably more. His arms that is so much, happily — not one of them are out, in, up, down; forward, behind, to VOL. XIII. 526

LIVING AGE.

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the left, to the right; his thumbs are to- how far he has gone), or to hurriedly turn gether, apart, making emphasis, upraised; the page. He seems to know all that is his palms slide rapidly by one another, his coming by heart, and to feel it as though it little fingers hook; he points, he touches, were his very life. He is on the mountains he makes rings and fists; his fingers go over, with the sacred bard; he is beside the waunder, through, on; and they twirl, and ters; he treads the pasture; he scents the twist, and clasp, and throw one another flowers; he feels the thorny way. To him away, without a moment's pause. Then his the fountains are again opened; he tells of whole pose again is trust; and then he their leaping in the sun, of the dark shades triumphs, and then he complains, and then away from them, of the Rock of his heart, ecstasy carries him completely away. He of the confusion of his adversaries crowding has scarcely entreated before he confesses around. He is a Gamaliel, an Isaiah, a he has no right to entreat; he has scarcely Job, a Jonah; and Israelitish youths are in sunk under his afflictions before he declares procession near him, and he sees the smoke he has received the strength to battle with of the sacrifice rise. He is hope again, them, and he is a new man, erect. He with his face radiant; he is endurance, shows faith, and submission, and abhor- with his head bent low; he is victory, with rence, and rage; he yields, he questions, he his hands up like a crown; he is a captive, admits he is unfit; he is tranquil, and then with his body chafing under heavy chains. vehement; he adores, and then he scorns; His arms open to receive sweet messengers; and then, suddenly, his arms drop by his his arms are clasped upon his breast with side lifeless, and he is a picture still, but joy that they are come; he points up, with this time of nothing but a light-bearded, | the sign that means the Ruler; he points long-coated, intelligent-faced man. to the nail-marks in his palms that are the The congregation sit. It is the time for sign for Jesus Christ. He flings away his the reading of the psalm, and they consult hands, to imply disdain; he joins them the black-board and their Bibles, and turn tight, to signify accord; he spreads them to the appointed page. Their preacher wide, to show universal reaching; he gently stretches out his arms to call them to at-waves them, to denote the shaking of the tention, and when he sees they are all heed-earth. Long before we are weary of watching him, begins his quick gesturing again. The psalm has been found by us, too, but it is impossible, with the preacher's nimbleness, and use, and genius, to keep up with him; and, the clue once gone, there is no regaining it, and we can once more do nothing but be all-absorbed and look. As may be expected, there is more beauty for us to see still. With the grand words of the Psalmist come grander actions, and we might be in the East, with a type before us of all the fire and imagery of the Hebrew race. Our eloquent mute bows his head, moves his hands above it, as if the waves were fiercely surging there; lays his breast for the storm to touch it; wrestles with his foes; bids them strike him; thrusts them back; pleads for help; exults when it is given; is borne down when it does not come. He shows the wind with its wild rush; the billows as they heave; the arrows of heaven descending; the peace that follows; the obedience that takes it all for good. And through all of it, there is no moment's stay in the passion (almost) of his finger-speech. He is still making up the sum of the sublime words he is rendering, with all the velocity of before. His congregation keep their eyes on him intent. He scarcely looks at his book, except now and then to lay one of his charmed fingers upon it (to remind himself, apparently, of

ing him, he has figured all this, and more, and he has stood in cedar groves, and by flocks feeding, and he has drunk in the colours of a Syrian sunset, and melted under the terrors of a desert blaze; and then the last verse of the psalm is finished, and his arms are again by his sides drooping, and his congregation have once more in a mass risen to their feet.

He is leading them to prayer again. He has changed his one book for the other, has opened it, lighted upon his place, and recommenced his whirl of interpretation. Letter succeeds letter, picture follows instantly upon picture, aspect, attitude, expression, pose. There is one, there is the other, there are all: and then the prayer is over, and he points to the black-board for the lesson, interprets that (the people again sitting for it), signs to them to stand for the Collect, and in a few minutes his (necessarily) shortened form of church service is done. It is now the time for the sermon, and in this is the marvellous power of this physical language still more displayed. As the preacher, of course, is full of his own thoughts, a different set of phrases clothes them, and a different set of symbols is needed to make them known. He cannot be more rapid,- one would think he must be panting now, ready to throw himself prostrate upon the floor, he can

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