the ground at this dry season, and partly from the eye being relieved from the intensity of splendour with which it is oppressed in summer; but be it what it may, the fact has not escaped one of our most beautiful poets;

There is a harmony

In Autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard nor seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been.

Now it is delightful among mountains. Mountains! how one's heart leaps up at the very word! There is a charm connected with mountains so powerful, that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! how the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our heart bounds to the music of their solitary cries-to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts. How inspiriting are the odours that breathe from the upland turf, from the rockhung flower, from the hoary and solemn pine; how beautiful are those lights and shadows

thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes as over a vast, inimitable picture.

At this season of the year the ascents of our own mountains are become most practicable. The heat of summer has dried up the moisture with which winter rains saturate the spongy turf of the hollows; and the atmosphere, clear and settled, admits of the most extensive prospects. Whoever has not ascended our mountains knows little of the beauties of this beautiful island. Whoever has not climbed their long and heathy ascents, and seen the trembling mountain-flowers, the glowing moss, the richly-tinted lichens at his feet; and scented the fresh aroma of the uncultivated sod, and of the spicy shrubs; and heard the bleat of the flock across their solitary expanses, and the wild cry of the mountain-plover, the raven, or the eagle; and seen the rich and russet hues of distant slopes and eminences, the livid gashes of ravines and precipices, the white glittering line of falling waters, and the cloud tumultuously whirling round the lofty summit; and then stood panting on that summit, and beheld the clouds alternately gather and break over a thousand

giant peaks and ridges of every varied hue,but all silent as images of eternity; and cast his gaze over lakes and forests, and smoking towns, and wide lands to the very ocean, in all their gleaming and reposing beauty, knows nothing of the treasures of pictorial wealth which his own country possesses.

But when we let loose the imagination from even these splendid scenes, and give it free charter to range through the far more glorious ridges of continental mountains, through Alps, Apennines or Andes, how is it possessed and absorbed by all the awful magnificence of their scenery and character! The sky-ward and inaccessible pinnacles, the

Palaces where nature thrones

Sublimity in icy halls!

the dark Alpine forests, the savage rocks and precipices, the fearful and unfathomable chasms filled with the sound of ever-precipitating waters; the cloud, the silence, the avalanche, the cavernous gloom, the terrible visitations of heaven's concentrated lightning, darkness and thunder; or the sweeter features of living, rushing streams, spicy odours of flower and shrub,

fresh spirit-elating breezes sounding through the dark pine grove; the ever-varying lights and shadows, and aerial hues; the wide prospects, and, above all, the simple inhabitants!

We delight to think of the people of mountainous regions; we please our imaginations with their picturesque and quiet abodes; with their peaceful secluded lives, striking and unvarying costumes, and primitive manners. We involuntarily give to the mountaineer heroic and elevated qualities. He lives amongst noble objects, and must imbibe some of their nobility; he lives amongst the elements of poetry, and must be poetical; he lives where his fellowbeings are far, far separated from their kind, and surrounded by the sternness and the perils of savage nature; his social affections must therefore be proportionably concentrated, his hometies lively and strong; but, more than all, he lives within the barriers, the strong-holds, the very last refuge which Nature herself has reared to preserve alive liberty in the earth, to preserve to man his highest hopes, his noblest emotions, his dearest treasures, his faith, his freedom, his hearth, and home. How glorious do those mountain-ridges appear when we look

upon them as the unconquerable abodes of free hearts; as the stern, heaven-built walls from which the few, the feeble, the persecuted, the despised, the helpless child, the delicate woman, have from age to age, in their last perils, in all their weaknesses and emergencies, when power and cruelty were ready to swallow them up, looked down, and beheld the million waves of despotism break at their feet:-have seen the rage of murderous armies, and tyrants, the blasting spirit of ambition, fanaticism, and crushing domination recoil from their bases in despair. "Thanks be to God for mountains!" is often the exclamation of my heart as I trace the History of the World. From age to age, they have been the last friends of man. In a thousand extremities they have saved him. What great hearts have throbbed in their defiles from the days of Leonidas to those of Andreas Hofer! What lofty souls, what tender hearts, what poor and persecuted creatures have they sheltered in their stony bosoms from the weapons and tortures of their fellow

men.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!