get to Switzerland, but my heart was with her summer snows, and I soothed my Sehnsucht with recollections of the past. How sad it is to gaze on the unused ice-axe leaning idle against the wall! The other day I turned up accidentally a photograph of the Mischabelhörner, and this sun picture stirred so vividly the memories of our ascent, that I yielded to an impulse to record some image of an excursion which gave us so much delight. Many like myself were last year excluded from Switzerland; and I fancied that a sketch in which the Alps and delight should be mingled like snow and champagne might interest other exiles from Helvetia. In spite even of the great war whose echoes, like thunder rolling among far mountains, reached us in awful mutterings, there are yet quiet hours in which the fancy indulges in visions of sights "too fair to be looked upon but only on holidays." My little picture is not painted for those Alpine Club gentlemen whose many triumphs of endurance and of daring lead them perhaps somewhat to underrate all things Alpine except the highest difficulty and the greatest danger, and who might possibly scorn the sketch of an ascent which, from a climbing point of view, is only second rate. No; it addresses itself very modestly to those who love with an imaginative love the majesty and the mystery of the austere beauty of Switzerland; who perchance with Tyndall have recognised upon the glacier and the peak the full joy of Being in the highest development of mental and of physical power; and have felt with Goethe the thrilling sense that in those noble Alps, in those "earth-o'ergazing mountains," His high works are glorious now as they were upon the first day. TWO SPRIGS OF EDELWEISS; OR, SKETCHES ABOVE THE SNOW-LINE. "Erst Empfindung, dann Gedanken, -GOETHE. AIN, rain; everywhere rain. Rain on the glistening deck of the night-packet in the Channel; rain on the sloppy Calais pier; rain through France and Belgium; rain through Prussia; rain slanting against the streaming pane of the railway carriage ; rain dimpling with a thousand splashy drops the pools of water through which the railway wheels glide over unseen rails. Rain everywhere from London to Cologne. But what matters rain, or any other drawback; for are we not going to Switzerland?—going again, for yet another summer holiday, to the land of the châlet, the glacier, and the torrent-to the land of the summer valley and the wintry mountain-to the land of the sapin and the chamois-to the land of health, and joy, and mountaineering? What, to a cultured man, are the two great wants in his holiday? Those wants are-alterative and excitement. Alterative and excitement are best got in Switzerland. The air, the scene, the change, are alteratives; the climbing is excitement. Therefore, oh, rain! pour on; we will endure; for are we not going, this 26th day of July 1871, to Switzerland? and do we not hope soon to be― "On mountain standing, Up in the air, crowned with the golden sun?" It is out of place to "speak tropically" of the world of winter; but, in the Alpine mountains, you lead a higher life as you breathe a purer air. It is the land of exercise, of health, and joy; of tender grandeur and of austere loveliness. Oh, the rapture of returning to Switzerland after an enforced absence from its glories and its joys! Oh, the memories and anticipations! Descend, slow rain! speed on, slow train! for are we not now returning to Switzerland, and shall weather damp our delight, or depress our enthusiasm? No. But, alas, in Switzerland itself we also find bad weather. Yes, this year (1871), at least in the months of July and August, the weather in the Alps was bad. Perhaps one fine day to three or four bad days; and the one fine day an uncertain phenomenon. While at the Schwarenbach Inn it was bitterly cold, and snow fell heavily. On the Wildstrubel we were scourged back by terrible storms. On the Altels we were nearly frozen to death by a snow and hail storm, driven by a fierce wind. No view from the summit, but a cold which made it dangerous to rest, and a storm which rendered it difficult to move on the arête. This year I was alone. Arthur Braybrooke was no more-as a mountaineer. I had no companion except my faithful Christian Lauener, who remained with me from the joyous hour in which I first saw his tall dark-green figure at Lauterbrunnen to the sadder hour in which I left him at Martigny. Going out, I travelled with two great Alpine climbers, but they were men of frivolous and worldly minds, who suffered themselves to be led away from Cologne to go to Ober-Ammergau to see the Passion Play, and thus wasted some of the time which ought to have been all devoted to the Alps. Resisting such sensual allurements, I went straight on to Switzerland, and only saw my friends once, at Châtillon, the day before a fine morning led them into a bad day, in their resolute ascent of the south side of the Matterhorn. And now, in London, in winter, I sit before the fire, and think over the pleasures of the season past. As I think, memories rise in crowds, and it is difficult to select the ascents of which I would fain try to fix some image here. Before me lie two little torn shreds of faded red bunting. They formed portions of the remnants of the flags erected upon the summits of the Jungfrau and Monte Rosa, and it was Lauener's idea to tear off a small piece of each to give to me in memory of our ascents. The stuff is thin and sere as the sails of the doomstruck ship of the Ancient Mariner, and the colour is now very faint and wan. Think how long those flags have waved or drooped, by night and day, through summer and through winter, through stillness and through storm, on the lonely and lofty peaks of those awful summits! As, in the dim aisles of some old cathedral, high up towards the misty roof, tattered banners, the trophies of glorious wars, droop their shredded points, and wave no more their blazon to the clarion's note, so these old torn patches of the Jungfrau and Monte Rosa flags now droop for ever in my London room-trophies of triumphs over peaks which once were held to be inaccessible to man. I like to look, at odd times, on these objective memorials of past pleasures, and to recall by their help the crests of rock and snow upon which they and I have stood. As I gaze the room in London disappears, and the still and solemn world of ice and mountain rises round me. I feel the joy of conquest; I see the sky, the snow, the scene, the cloud; and the keen pure air of Alpine mountain-tops blows freshly fair, and fans the winter fire. These two flag shreds determine my choice of the ascents which I will now endeavour to depict. From the Schwarenbach we have passed to the Jungfrau Hotel, on the Æggischhorn, at which I am known. The hotel was not very full, but there were among the guests one or two men with Alpine minds and designs. The first night we had a snowstorm, and the snow lay round the hotel itself. We only waited for fine weather in order to attack the Jungfrau. Christian represented that a second guide was necessary, and for this purpose I engaged Johann Fischer of the Æggischhorn, with whom I had previously done some work. Fischer is one of the most rising guides in the Oberland, and will soon come into the front rank. He is a tall, well-made, stronglybuilt man, with a very dark face, which wears a rather stern expression. He is a silent man, but very capable of "doing all that is doable." He is cool, reso lute, daring; and I would trust him willingly in cases of danger. I like Fischer much, and parted with him. unwillingly. At last fine weather. Sending on a porter with rugs and provisions to the Faulberg hut, at which we are to sleep, Christian, Fischer, and myself leave the Æggischhorn's hotel at about 2 P.M., to saunter gently up the great Aletsch glacier to the Faulberg. Guides say it must be fine to-morrow, though they add, there is too much freshly-fallen snow about. The sun is setting as we climb the rocks to our high sleeping-place, and one side of the glacier is warm in |