by golden chains dropt down to him out of heaven! Would a mere consciousness of that kind, which fellow-beings could seldom understand, and would seldomer admit or value-would that repay one for years of loneliness and weary toil, either past or future?"

"Oh! yes; oh! yes," said the sad applicant. "Give me peace, give me peace, or something which may fortify me from the fearful shapes which of late crowd thronging around my poor worn heart. Give it me."

And she stretched out her hands, and bent forward in unconscious eager

ness.

"You lack not so very much, my daughter," said the merchant. "Does it not comfort you, in some small measure, to know that even a helpless old man like me understands your grief, and has felt the like, and that he suffers yours with you?"

"Yes," said she; "I am sure it does."

"For the rest," he continued, "I will name your compensation. And lest you forget it, I will write the name for you. Young people do not always remember what is only told to them."

So he wrote a single word upon a slip of paper, and put it into the young girl's hand.

My daughter," said he, "it is FAITH. Your deliverance will surely come. Do you not know it?"

It was with a beautiful and quiet intensity of utterance that he bent slightly towards his fair interlocutor, and spoke. The depth of his emotion caused his piercing eyes to become dimmed with tears, and his face flushed, and a slight tremor or agitation fled through his aged frame, as if he had named some name of mysterious power. It was almost as if an inspiration had descended upon him; and I thought I could see the reflection of it in the brighter smile which played across the thin and delicate face of the maiden, as she looked and listened.

66

"Faith. only deWorks

Yes, yes," she answered. Still, I had it before. It had parted from me for a season. have long been my portion. For renewed faith, my dear sir, I have to thank you. And what am I to pay for my compensation?"

"Oh," answered the merchant, "you need not be uneasy about that. Some time, you may, if you wish, transfer a

portion of your acquisition to some one as much in need as you were. That will recompense me."

The young girl departed with a much lighter step than that with which she had entered. Having, as before, business which called me to another part of the city, I now requested the old merchant to favor me with one of those circulars to which he referred so often; with which demand he readily complied. "I fear, however," said he, as he handed me the document, "that you will not find it a very successful effort in its peculiar department of literature. It is an experiment of my own, and I have not at all satisfied myself by my combinations of capitals, exclamation points, and shopman-English. I suspect I should have made a much better puff if I had paid the grocer at the corner, or the printer's devil, to compose it for me."

In

I did not haunt the compensation merchant's little shop any more. deed, if I remember rightly, his establishment was shortly after closed. Whether he was forced by a tide of business prosperity to remove to one of several new marble-fronted stores, which were about that time erected near the business center of the city, or whether he was obliged to suspend operations by finding that his wares were not suited to that market, I cannot say. The circular which he gave me contained a business-like statement of the objects of the company for which he was acting as general agent-their charter from the central government, and some rose-colored exemplifications of the probable pecuniary prospects of the concern, which latter vaticinations, from my observations upon the old merchant, I fully believe, and am consequently of opinion that sundry large fortunes have been made by leading stockholders. If any one recollects some person who appears to command large amounts of money, and whose sources of income are unknown, I recommend him, if curious, to inquire whether such wealthy person was not connected with the Compensation Company.

The cireular I had fully intended to transcribe in full, as a fitting termination. to this short account, and likewise as a conclusion, which, being ready made, would save me the trouble of composing any formal peroration, but I regret to state that I am unable to find it. I re

collect, that upon a hurried application for a proper envelope, for some toy or confectionery intended as a gift, I delivered over sundry scraps of paper, among which it must have gone. I cannot trust myself to replace the statements of the circular from mere meinory, lest I do injustice to its careful

provisions; and I experience so much mortification at the loss, and the consequent unavoidable lameness of my narrative, that I find myself totally unable to compose such a peroration as I mentioned. My story, therefore, must apparently conclude here, without any end.

AS S the traveler approaches the city of Berne from Basle, the whole range of the Bernese Alps, including Mont Blanc, breaks upon his view. The effect is startling. There they stand, those mighty and famous Alps, even as in the ancient days and in the generations of old; huge giants clothed in garments of white, looking down upon successive races and rolling centuries. Thus they stood when Joseph lay in an Egyptian prison and when the Son of Man hung upon the cross at Golgotha. They have beheld Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, with all their hosts and banners, appear and disappear upon their respective destinies. With a kind of inexpressible fascination, the glance leaps from peak to peak, and measures those broken, inaccessible slopes, those polar regions of rock and ice, towering into the pure, cold, upper air, above the flight of the eagle and the floating cloud. There they lie for ever, huge blocks of parian marble, banks of new-fallen snow, drifted up amid the stars; piles of spotless, dazzling clouds resting on the horizon, or battlements of burnished silver. One feels like Christian, upon the top of the high hill called Clear, gazing, at last, upon the gates of the Celestial City.

Many thoughts and emotions throng upon the mind; souvenirs of history, glimpses of armies, battles, and heroes; Cimbrian hosts and Roman legions; an oppressive sense of the insignificance of man, the fleetingness of life and the glory of Him who "laid the foundations of the earth, when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy."

The tourist, fortunate enough to catch this passing view on a clear summer day, returns to his country with an idea that

he has seen the Alps. He has, however, but glanced at one page, in an endless volume. An air of Haydn, a passage of Shakspeare would almost furnish as adequate an idea of their deep and evervarying splendors. Only long familiarity can enable him to appreciate how completely they surpass in magnificence even the apparently glorified representations by poets and painters. I have enjoyed the privilege of studying them about eighteen months. No scenery on earth can compare with them in power over the imagination. They are never the same and never at rest. Magical changes float over them perpetually. Each play of light, each modification of the atmosphere, each advancing hour, the shadow of every cloud, works its soft, slow marvels of grace and splendor. How often have I been struck, mute and spell-bound, by the sudden bursting upon me of this resplendent spectacle, through an opening in the forest, on turning a precipice, or mounting a hill. It is not only that, at each new sight of them, the mind better understands their immensity; but they appear in some unexpected variety, according to the season, day, hour, or point from which they are viewed. They amaze by their exquisite beauty, and overwhelm by their sublimity. Like a grand oratorio or mighty poem, they are full of unexpected discoveries, and sweet surprises which ravish the soul more and more as we understand them better.

The walks about Berne are numberless and perfectly beautiful, but this towering and almost unearthly phenomenon crowns them all with a new and ineffable glory, deeply suggestive of devotional feeling. They recall the land of Beulah, and one seems nearer God in presence of these revelations of his

power. It is as if we perceive the breadth of the earth and enter into the treasures of the snow. "Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner, but my salvation shall be forever and my righteousness shall not be abolished."

The hour of sunset offers the greatest enchantment. The town and environs are full of chosen points of view. From the belvederes of the principal hotels, from the balconies to the various platforms, overhanging the edge of the precipice on which the city rises; from the terrace of the observatory which peeps down into the streets; or from the tower of the minster as from a balloon, groups of travelers stand gazing for hours. Let us mount the eminence called the Euge, overlooking the valley of the Aar, about fifteen minutes from the gate, and take our place beneath this avenue of ancient elms. We are on the edge of a precipice. About a hundred feet beneath, the green, limpid river rushes between its close high banks. From the surface of the water, the eye measures with a new impression the stupendous stature of each giant pinnacle. The old town, close built, of massive stone, with its antique walls and towers, its steeples, cathedral and beautiful belfry, is built upon precipitous hights, and shines and sparkles in the afternoon sunshine. It recalls Jerusalem, from the Mount of Olives, as seen by Him who would have gathered its inhabitants as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings and they would not. The surrounding landscape, sometimes abruptly swelling into quite lofty hills, has the blue range of the Jura on the north, and on the south a rich mass of mountains and precipices looking in the two lakes of Thun and Brienz, themselves invisible, but their presence betrayed by that aerial softness which hangs over distant waters. The landscape is bathed in mellow sunshine, and above rise those fairy snow-realms with their ice-palaces, lately of pure silver, but, as the day draws to its close, steeped in a deeper and ever-deepening hue, almost impossible to describe. From an exquisite rose-tint, it passes to an ensanguined stain, and then to a burning crimson.

The scene below undergoes a gradual transformation. Prismatic hues blend softly into the wide landscape. An ethereal vapor floats over it. The purple hills and azure rocks melt together into the sombre evening shadows. The earth grows darker and darker. But the towering walls and broken pinnacles above become more radiant, and deepen with intenser brightness, as if unaware that the lower earth has yielded to the embrace of night. Their illumined sides reflect a kind of dusky moonlight. The wrapt spectator gazes in profound silence. The damp night shadows steal slowly up. So death creeps upon some majestic victim still contending, but in vain, against his mighty hand. Now their lower portion is dimmed, while the summits are yet kindling with triumphant splendor; when suddenly the warm glow completely relapses into a bluish, ghastly white, as if a human soul had just taken its departure.

I remember to have once taken a friend, who had been but a few hours in Berne, to the terrace of the observatory for a view at sunset. It was too late,to his great disappointment. We had caught some glimpses of those shining tops, as we went, glowing as if in the bloody light of a furnace; but, when we reached the observatory, the solemn giants lay cold and dead in the damp night-mists. We waited awhile, to watch their gloomy outlines disappear in the thickening shadows, when suddenly they were overspread with a warm blush, and their extinguished tops kindled again into rosy fire. For one or two minutes we watched the not unusual phenomenon.

This is only one of the many optical effects. Sometimes the setting sun sheds over them only the most delicate rosecoloring, and sometimes steeps them in a broad golden illumination. I have seen them reflect the lurid glare of domes and steeples in the red light of a midnight conflagration. Perhaps no two sunsets were ever the same. Then comes the enchantment of the morning, the transformations of moon and the wonderful magnificence cast about them by clouds. It is when half revealed that they most astonish. Here the soul acknowledges the sweetness of the divine artist. Sometimes in my walks they are entirely invisible. The landscape is half veiled by sunshine I look in vain for the stupen

mist.

dous spectacle, and almost forget, as we are apt to do, great spiritual truths, the eternal grandeur and beauty so often revealed. As the soft vapor rises from river and hill, I pause again, for the hundredth time, incredulous, overwhelmed, and amazed at that broad world built up above our world, as if, in its ample silver sides, I caught glimpses of some other planet, gleaming slopes and shining mountains, leaning far upwards into heaven, not having the least apparent connection with our earth.

These wonderful snow-peaks, forever above the clouds, are nature's grand work-halls. Here she forms and pours, to remote coasts and oceans, the great rivers of Europe: the Po, the Tessino, the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Danube. Here she fabricates those lovely lakes, whose shores fill the mind with a sense of beauty, and in whose transparent depths populations find the means of life. In those mysterious solitudes the daring traveler has scaled the frozen hights which nature. seems to have formed impregnable, and amid those defiles, from precipice to precipice, and torrent to torrent, science has cast the solid road; ambition has led proud armies, and religion has built the hospitable convent. How many a weary pilgrim, overtaken by the snow-storm, has left his nameless bones beneath yonder colossal monument; how many an eager hunter has fallen into a bottomless chasm; or, by a fatal misstep, plunged headlong down a precipice, such as, says John Miller, sometimes turns giddy the head of the wild beast.

The effect of the Alps is, I think, hightened by a mental illusion. It is well known that the increased apparent size of the moon, at the period of her rising, is an error of the reason. To the eye, she really appears no larger on the horizon than in the zenith. The belief in her expanded orb, is formed by an unconscious process of the mind. This fact any man of science will explain. On the same principle, the Alpine range appears much more stupendous to the imagination than to the eye. A daguerreotype view, merely carrying out the rules of perspective, would afford no adequate idea of the impression received from nature. In order to produce that impression, an artist ought to magnify their real dimensions upon the canvas, as the only mode of satisfying those who have studied them. They

There are periods of bad weather, during which they entirely disappear for weeks, so that the eye becomes accustomed to the delightful and magnificent landscape, without this, its mightiest feature. It captivates by elements of the richest scenery. The inferior mountains in the foreground rise majestically into the sky, and those far loftier which form the shores of the the lakes Thun and Brienz, strike with all the grandeur of an Alpine range. When the weather clears, leaving only some masses of opaque blue cloud upon the horizon, the eye measures the nearer summits, the Niesen and Stockhorn, believing it has discovered in them the monarchs of the earth themselves, when lo! as the heavy vapor slowly sinks or breaks apart, above its black edge, at a hight apparently impossible, projects a pointed image-a silvery fragment, cutting the blue sky too sharply with its broken outline to be a cloud, and yet too near the stars to belong to our lower earth. You gaze some moments, lost in doubt and struck with wonder, as at a miracle. Noiselessly and imperceptibly the heavy thick cloud-veil falls away, and with a slow grand movement, one after the other, pinnacle and pyramid of solid silver rise into view, the Wetterhorn, or Storm Peak; the Finsteraarhorn, the dark Aar Peak, the gloomy father of a beautiful daughter, the river Aar; the Schreckhorn, or the Peak of Terror; the Jungfrau, or the Virgin, and the Blumlisalp, or the Flower Peak.

At Berne, of course, these mountains are the prominent objects of earth and heaven. They are always gleaming upon you at some unexpected place or moment, and in an aspect surprisingly new, or ravishingly beautiful and grand. Now they lie engulphed in one solid mass of azure clouds, whose upper perfectly horizontal outline resembles the surface of an ocean. From its tranquil and level bosom rise only the tops of each peak. This beautiful appearance recalls the period of the deluge, or, perhaps, the anterior primeval ages of the earth before man became an inhabitant of it,

when the present continents formed the bottom of an universal flood, nine thousand feet in depth, and yonder summits were actually islands. Now they look down into the streets of the old medieval town, far overtopping the summit of the Minster tower, and now float, like a vision of glory, over sweeps of forest foliage. Now they open upon you from a tender mist, as if the Creator's hand had, at that moment, first called forth their ethereal tops of soft, rosy fire. Now their base dissolved and lost in vapor, they seem suspended above, like "that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God."

Their effulgent beauty derives a new interest from its association with the idea of liberty. It is singular how the hand of poetry and history has crowned Switzerland with this halo, and how she has maintained it through a long series of centuries, amid the wars, revolutions, and selfish diplomatic territorial arrangements of Europe. Even the iron heart of Napoleon softened towards her. After his downfall, when the Holy Alliance had everything in its own hands, a certain liberty was still left to Switzerland. The great attempt of the people, in 1848, to break from their tutelage, was commenced by Switzerland. Her hand first struck the chord which vibrated through the continent. For a moment, Europe proclaimed the principle that no governmental power can be legitimate which does not flow from the people, but in 1854, Switzerland is the only country where the republic really exists. Liberty appears to be her birth-right, and her de

termination. Is it not remarkable that, in the centre of Europe, without seacoasts, fleets, or colonies, locked in by powerful military monarchies, where the word liberty would be treason, she should have founded a constitution, modeled upon the ideas of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton; that she should maintain a perfectly free press in three languages, that she should be in the full enjoyment of those rights of man, with which the Almighty invested every human being, and of which none can be deprived without a violation of his laws and the introduction of confusion and discord into the plan of Providence-in short, that she should keep the banner of the Republic, floating broadly on the breeze, upon the very pinnacle of the European continent?

"Liberté c'est ton jour, ce sol est ton empire; Là nulle ambition sous tes traites ne conspire D'un peuple pauvre et fier toi seule armes les mains;

Sur ces pics sourcilleux, vierges de pas humains, L'aigle au vol indompté semble te rendre hom

mage,

Le bleu miroir des lacs réfléchir ta beauté,
Et le bruit des torrents dire à l'écho sauvage:
Liberté Liberté!

"Héritier de ces biens, toi qui les abandonnes,
Et soutiens à prix d'or les lointaines couronnes,
D'où vient qu'aux premier sons d'un air mélo-
dieux,

J'ai vu des pleurs furtifs s'échapper de tes yeux?
Sans doute, en l'ecoutant tu rêvais te patrie,
Et des vallons natals l'agreste majesté;
Sans douté il murmurait à ton âme attendrie;
Liberté! Liberté !"*