began to descend, we barst upon the view of the valley of the Fhize. the city of Cologne, with all its towers, the Rhine itself distinct seen at the distance of seven miles.-the Seven Mountains above Bonn on car right, and a boundless sweep of the country beyond the Fhine in front of us. To be sure, it was a striking contrast to the first view of the valley of the Tiber from the mountain of Viterbo: bat the Fhine in mighty recollections will vie with anything, and this spot was particularly striking: Cologne was Agrippa's oolity inhabited by Germans, brought from beyond the river, to live as the subjects of Rome; the river itself was the frontier of the Empirethe limit as it were of two worlds, that of Roman laws and customs. and that of German. Far before us lay the land of our Saxon and Teutonic forefathers-the land uncorrupted by Roman or any other mixture: the birth-place of the most moral races of men that the world has yet seen-of the soundest laws-the least violent passions, and the fairest domestic and civil virtues. I thought of that memorable defeat of Varus and his three legions, which for ever confined the Romans to the western side of the Rhine, and preserved the Tectonic nation,—the regenerating element in modern Europe, -safe and free.

On the Elbe, a little before sunset. July, 1823.

2. We are now near Pirna, that is, near the end of the Saxon Switzerland; the cliffs which here line the river on both sides-a wall of cliff rising out of wood, and crowned with wood-will in a very short time sink down into plains, or at the best into gentle slopes, and the Elbe will wind through one unvaried flat from this point till it reaches the sea. There is to me something almost affecting in the striking analogy of rivers to the course of human life, and my fondness for them makes me notice it more in them than in any other objects in which it may exist equally. The Elbe rises in plains; it flows through plains for some way; then for many miles it runs through the beautiful scenery which we have been visiting, and then it is plain again for all the rest of its course. Even yet, dearest, and we have reached our middle course in the ordinary run of life; how much more favoured have we been than this river; for hitherto we have gone on through nothing but a fair country, yet so far like the Elbe, that the middle has been the loveliest. And what if our

* This, and the defeat of the Moors by Charles Martel, he used to rank as the two most important battles in the world.

course is henceforth to run through plains as dreary as those of the Elbe, for we are now widely separated, and I may never be allowed to return to you; and I know not what may happen, or may even now have happened to you. Then the rivers may be our comfort, for we are passing on as it passes, and we are going to the bosom of that Being who sent us forth, even as the rivers return to the sea, the general fountain of all waters. Thus much is natural religion,not surely to be despised or neglected, though we have more given us than anything which the analogy of nature can parallel. For He who trod the sea, and whose path is in the deep waters, has visited us with so many manifestations of His grace, and is our God by such other high titles, greater than that of creation, that to him who puts out the arm of faith, and brings the mercies that are round him home to his own particular use, how full of overflowing comfort must the world be, even when its plains are the dreariest and loneliest ! Well may every one of Christ's disciples repeat to Him the prayer made by His first twelve, "Lord increase our faith!" and well may He wonder—as the Scripture applies such a term to God-that our faith is so little. Be it strengthened in us, dearest wife, and in our children, that we may be all one, now and evermore, in Christ Jesus.

V. TOUR IN SWITZERLAND AND NORTH OF ITALY.

July 16, 1829. 1. How completely is the Jura like Citharon, with its vάmas and Xeuwves, and all that scenery which Euripides has given to the life in the Baccha. Immediately beyond the post-house, at S. Cergues, the view opens,—one that I never saw surpassed, nor can I ever; for if America should afford scenes of greater natural beauty, yet the associations cannot be the same. No time, to civilized man, can make the Andes like the Alps; another Deluge alone could place them on a level. There was the Lake of Geneva, with its inimitable and indescribable blue,-the whole range of the mountains which bound its southern shore, the towns that edge its banks,— the rich plain between us and its waters,-and immediately around us, the pines and oaks of the Jura, and its deep glens, and its thousand flowers,-out of which we looked on this Paradise.

Genoa, July 29, 1929

1 Owen I am in the shore of the Mediterranean. Isav my in a Estates vien i vis list in Italy, but now I am oneDir 10 25 verg edge, and have been on it and in it. True it s that the bishermen s Di Dore than a vast mass of salt water, perger zoovse u think a se: be it is also the most magnificem ang a the vidi 4 pa thoose to think it so; and it is as tri de C & Is the immer. And as the pococurante temper is na de bogies, mi te vich an admire heartly is much more

1-2 ban I vist that ever you come to Genoa, you may think de h-iomnen u be more than any common sea, and may be amale 31 Jak run a vabout a deep stirring of delight.

On the Lake of Como, August 3, 1829.

3. I any how billigetil a would be to bring one's family and by her but then, happy. I think and feel how little such volup tinus trement would repay for abandoning the line of usefulness vind Ihren England, and how the feeling myself be guess and reless, bung merely to lock about me, and training a dhe se way, would soon make all this beauty 76.". and spekz era varsze Ft to see it as we are now bug naar nemens of recreation, to strengthen us for work to some, and v god with beautiful recollections our daily life of home lines —as mbel s kindl, and is a pleasure which I think wy may men without restrict England has other destinies than Dese x17zes—I ase de word in no foolish or unchristian sense.

but she has other destines; her people have more required of them, with ber full molligence, her restless activity, her enormous Trests and encraves Lificates: her pare religion and unchecked Seedom; ber ken of society, with so much of evil, yet so much of god z n að sch immense power ocnferred by it;-her citizens. Test of £zen should think of their own rest or enjoyment. but should densh every farnulty and improve every opportunity to the stemmnost, so de good to themselves and to the world. There fore thee leve'y males and this surpassing beauty of lake and evazut al ginien and wood, are least, of all men, for us to verst, and or oventry, so entirely subdued as it is to man's uses. with is gerde bills and valleys, its innumerable canals and ocaches, is best suited as an instrument of usefulness.

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Zurich, August 7, 1829. 4. Once more I must recross the Alps to Chiavenna, which cer-tainly is amongst the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. Its situation resembles that of Aosta and Bellinzona, and I think, if possible, it surpasses them both. The mountains by which it is enclosed are formed of that hard dark rock which is so predominant in the lower parts of the Alps on the Italian side, and which gives them so decided a character. Above Chiavenna their height is unusually great, and their magnificence, both in the ruggedness of their form and the steepness of their cliffs, as in the gigantic size of the fragments which they have thrown down into the valley, and in the luxuriance of their chestnut woods, is of the very highest degree. The effect too is greater, because the valley is so much narrower than that of the Ticino at Bellinzona, or of the Dorea Baltea at Aosta; in fact the stream is rather a torrent than a river, but full and impetuous, and surprisingly clear, although the snowy Alps from which it takes its source rise at a very little distance; but their substance apparently is harder than that of the Alps about Mont Blanc, and the torrents, therefore, are far purer than the Dorea or the Arve. In the very midst of the town of Chiavenna, now covered with terrace walls and vineyards to its very summit, stands an enormous fragment of rock, once detached from the neighbouring mountains, and rising to the height, I suppose, of seventy or eighty feet. It was formerly occupied by a fortress built on its top by the Spaniards, in their wars in the north of Italy; but it all looks quiet and peaceful now. Miss H., her brother, and I wandered about before dinner to take a scramble amidst the rocks and chestnuts. We followed a path between the walls of the vineyards, wide enough for one person only, till it led us out amid the rocks, and then continued to wind about amongst them, leading to the little grotto-like dwellings which were scattered amongst them, or built on to the enormous fragments which cover the whole mountain side. On the tops of these fragments, however, as well as between them, a vegetation of fine grass has contrived to establish itself, and the chestnuts twist their knotty roots about in every direction till they find some fissure by which they can strike down into the soil. It is impossible, therefore, to picture anything more beautiful than a scramble about these mountains. You are in a wood of the most magnificent trees, shaded from the sun, yet not treading on mouldering leaves or damp earth, but on a carpet of the freshest spring turf, rich with all

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sorts of flowers. You have the softness of an upland meadow an the richness of an English park, yet you are amidst masses of rock. } now rearing their steep sides in bare cliffs, now hung with the senna and the broom, now carpeted with turf, and only showing their existence by the infinitely-varied form which they give to the ground, the numberless deep dells, and green amphitheatres, ai deliciously smooth platforms, all caused by the ruins of the moantain which have thus broken and studded its surface, and are yet so mellowed by the rich vegetation which time has given them, that they now only soften its character.

This to me unrivalled beauty of the chestnut woods was very remarkable in two or three scenes which we saw the next day; one before we set out for the Splugen, when we drove a little way up the valley of Chiavenna to see a waterfall. The fall was beautiful in itself, as all waterfalls must be, but its peculiar charm was this that instead of falling amidst copsewood, as the falls in Wales and the north of England generally do, or amidst mere shattered rocks. like that fine one in the Valais near Martigny-here, on the contrary, the water fell over a cliff of black rock into a deep rocky basin, and then as it flowed down in its torrent it ran beneath a platform of the most delicious grass, on which the great chestnut trees stood about as finely as in an English park, and rose almost to a level with the top of the fall, while the turf underneath them was steeped in a perpetual dew from the spray. The other scene was on the road to Isola, on the way to the Splugen, in the valley of the Lina. It is rather a gorge than a valley, so closely do the mountains approach one another, while the torrent is one succession of falls. Yet just in one place, where the road by a succession of zigzags had wound up to the level of the top of the falls, and where the stream was running for a short space as gentle and as limpid as one of the clear rapid chalk streams of the South of Hampshire, the turf sloped down gently from the road to the stream, the great chestnut trees spread their branches over it, and just on its smooth margin was a little chapel, with those fresco paintings on its walls which are so constant a remembrance of Italy. Across the stream there was the same green turf and the same chestnut shade, and if you did not lift up your eyes high into the sky, to notice the barrier of insurmount able cliff and mountain which surrounded you on each side, you would have had no other images before you than those of the softest and most delicate repose, and of almost luxurious enjoyment.