the snow was terribly soft and deep. No glissade was even possible; we tried a plaid glissade, but only drove up before us waves and heaps of hissing snow. We recrossed the wide glacier, down which a thousand runlets of glacier water rushed and gurgled, and we reached the other side just as the sadness of twilight fell and deepened. Night soon came, warm, still, and with a deep velvety darkness, across which the lightning flashed. We saw a light in the cabane of the north side of the Matterhorn: we knew who was there, and my guides prophesied again, and were right, that the party would be beaten back the next day. The darksome way along the cliffs seemed very long; the Riffelhorn again showed duskily huge, as we wound round its base, until at length we saw from afar off the solitary hotel, with all its small deep windows alive with cheery light. Approaching it, Christian and Peter begin to jödel; and we hear dogs barking, and see figures flitting about before the door. Coming out of the dense darkness of the night into the warm light streaming from the hospitable doorway, we find ourselves in the centre of a group of friends and hotel guests, and have to answer a thousand questions about our long, laborious climb. It is past nine o'clock, and we have been working since I A.M. I thought the snow would have been too heavy for you," says a veteran of the Alpine Club; "but come in, old fellow, and have some dinner-I've ordered some to be kept ready. I knew you couldn't get back until very late. The snow must have been awful up there!" The guides state that it was one of the most laborious ascents they had ever made. One kindly lady had grown alarmed at the long time we were out. Hearing of the bad state of the snow, and seeing the lightning flash, she had become nervously afraid that we had been lost; and she told me how the sound of our faroff jödels had cheered her. After a change, and after ordering champagne for my guides, I come down to dinner. It is the same room which looked so blank and cheerless in the morning, but which now seems an ideal of light and warmth and comfort. Talking cheerily, I dine with effusion, and we light the cigars of mellow rapture. Looking out before we turn in, we find the weather bad. The lightning has ceased, there is a chilly wind, the mists are covering the lonely hills, and out of mist comes snow upon the peaks. "No man will do anything to-morrow upon the high peaks," observes Peter, sententiously; and we go in with a sense of comfort. The house always seems more valuable when the night outside is bad. And so I have done Monte Rosa !—a thing long dreamed of, long desired, and I may sleep in peace. No dusky apparition to-morrow morning at I A.M. No, a sound, sweet, well-earned sleep, which shall last till seven, and then give you back, refreshed and well, to another day of Alpine life and joy. I had two fingers frost-bitten-a consequence of clinging to ice-covered rocks on Monte Rosa. Going down to Zermatt we found the Matterhorn party, which had been driven back by weather; and we sat down at Zermatt, waiting in the hope of better weather, in order ourselves to attack the north side of the Matterhorn. There was, however, so much snow on the north side that foot and hand hold upon the rocks would have been impracticable; and Christian and Knubel pronounced an attempt hopeless. The weather continued bad, and I lost patience. We therefore crossed the Théodule in very disagreeable weather, and went to Courmayeur, in order to reach Chamouni by the Col du Géant. On the Col I lost my ice-axe (the gift of one of the best fellows on earth), which will never again be seen by man until the crevasses shall give up their dead. We also started a flock of ptarmigan, and saw two chamois. When on the Tschingel a small herd of chamois crossed our path within easy range; but we had, of course, no rifle with us. The peculiarity of this singular little animal seems to be that it can only exist where there is nothing to eat. It is this curious fact which renders the pretty creature so interesting to the natural philosopher. Ah! talking of chamois, how sad that parting for a whole year from the Alps, and turning back from mountains to cities and to plains! You are in such fine training when you leave off work that you could do anything; and yet a sad day came at Martigny, on which I bade farewell to Christian, and hurried home to exchange the ice-axe for the sword, and mountain-climbing for the Hampshire campaign. One does the work in summer, and paints the picture of it in winter. Memory and anticipation blend as I sit in London by a seacoal fire, and sketch the "summer snows" to which I owe so much and great delight. And so farewell-a long farewell-farewell, for a long year-to Switzerland. The first visit to the Alps has the intoxication of bridal joys; later visits, when familiarity has deepened love, have the profounder delight of happy marriage. Wonder may be less, but the sense of glory, the enjoyment of intimacy, if calmer, are yet greater joys. Come, swallow, come! and bring next summer and its Alpine trip. I await with impatience and anticipate with longing. Till that summer hour comes, farewell, O Switzerland! thou high and pure Romola of nations; farewell—and au revoir! BETWEEN MOOR AND MAIN: THE LOVES AND HUMOURS OF A COUNTRY BET "She is coming-my dove, my dear; ETWEEN sea and moor there is, on the wild coast of Chalkshire, a space of fair English landscape which comprises roads and woods and fields. A few miles inland, the great wide moors stretch away in a prairie of billowy hills; hills purple in the golden sunlight, darkly indigo when great grey cloud-masses gloom the noble waste. On the other hand, the sea, ever varying in ceaseless change of aspect, spreads far and wide to the distant horizon. A strip of homely beauty extends between the unmoving moor and the ever-restless sea. Within this nobly-bounded strip stand stately mansions, olden halls, quaint and ancient farm-houses, and many of those lovely cottages which form one of the chief beauties of our dear old English land. A ruined abbey lends the charm of picturesque association to the soft fair valley which lies very close to the little country-town called Silverspring-a town which doubtless owes its pretty name to a deep old well, and to the crystal spring which still bubbles and sparkles from out the kindly earth. On the coast, close under the high cliffs, nestles a little fishing village, which K sends out boats that darken the bright waves with burnt sienna sails. Not very far from the ivied ruin and from the quiet town is Fernside, the fair countryseat of a Chalkshire county family. Fernside was and is the charming residence of the Poyntons. Every year, so soon as "the Long” commenced, which set their son free, they assembled a few guests, and those who had once visited at Fernside were glad to come again. The father was a stately, white-headed old gentleman, polite and punctilious, and with a touch of the manner of the oldworld school, which is now beginning to pass away. Though sixty years of age, he was hale, upright, active; his eye still bright and his cheek ruddy. The mother, slight and delicate, often in bad health, was exquisitely kind and graceful as a hostess. She was deferentially attached to her husband; devotedly attached to her children. The three children, to whom we are about to be introduced, were Charley, Clara, and Lotty. Clara Poynton was nearly twenty. Though only by a very little above the standard height of woman, her fine figure was so upright and so well carried that she seemed to be tall. Her complexion had that tender delicacy of colour which suggests the dawn of a blush, and the shape and contour of the face were of that perfect oval which involves the most delicately graduated outline of softly rounded cheek and chin. Her clear shining hazel eyes looked at everything steadily and directly. Her manner had that calm composure and sweet self-possession which indicate a nature never yet stirred to its depths. Her step was quick, springy, and decisive; her attitudes were well poised and always graceful. The thick braids of |