beauties will admit of being explained on the same principle. Here, we shall have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses-tufted woods hung over precipices-lakes intersected with castled promontories-ample solitudes of unplowed and untrodden valleys-namelèss and gigantic ruins-and mountain echoes repeating the scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract. 5. This, too, is beautiful, and to those who can interpret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as it is, it is to the recollection of man and the suggestion of human feelings that its beauty also is owing. The mere forms and colors that compose its visible appearance are no more capable of exciting any emotion in the mind than the forms and colors of a Turkey carpet. It is sympathy with the present or the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that alone gives it either interest or beauty; and the delight of those who behold it will always be found to be in exact proportion to the force of their imaginations and the warmth of their social affections. 6. The leading impressions here are those of romantic seclusion and prīmē'val simplicity; lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, "from towns and toils remote," and rustic poets and philosophers communing with nature, and at a distance from the low pursuits and selfish malignity of ordinary mortals: then there is the sublime impression of the Mighty Powers which piled the mighty cliffs upon each other, and rent the mountains asunder, and scattered their giant fragments at their base, and all the images connected with the monuments of ancient magnificence and extinguished hostility-the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of the scenes where they lie interred; and the romantic ideas attached to their ancient traditions, and the peculiarities of the actual life of their descendants -their wild and enthusiastic poëtry-their gloomy superstitions -their attachment to their chiefs-the dangers, and the hardships, and enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishingstheir pastoral shielings on the mountains in summer-and the tales and the sports that amuse the little groups that are frozen into their vast and trackless valleys in the winter. 7. Add to all this the traces of vast and obscure antiquity that are impressed on the language and the habits of the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, the gulfy torrents of the land; and the solemn and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, of the weakness and insignificance of perishable man, whose generations thus pass away into oblivion, with all their toils and ambition; while nature holds on her unvarying course, and pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her proud and perishable sovereign. JEFFREY. V. 148. MORNING HYMN TO MOUNT BLANC. AST thou a charm to stay the morning star HA In his steep course?—so long he seems to pause On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc! Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form! 2. O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer Yet like some sweet, beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven. Green vales and icy cliffs all join my hymn. Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink: Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded,-and the silence came,- 5 Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 6. "GOD!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice, Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Utter forth "GOD!" and fill the hills with praise. 7. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peak, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Risc, like a cloud of incense, from the earth! COLERIDGE. VI. 149. ELEMENTS OF THE SWISS LANDSCAPE. ASSING out through a forest of larches, whose dark verdure baths' of Leuk,' the interèst of the landscape does not at all diminish. What a concentration and congregation of all elements of sublimity and beauty are before you! what surprising contrasts of light and shade, of form and color, of softness and ruggedness! Here are vast heights above you, and vast depths below, villages hanging to the mountain sides, green pasturages and winding paths, lovely meadow slopes enameled with flowers, deep immeasurable ravines', torrents thundering down them; colossal, overhanging, castellated' reefs of grănite; snowy peaks with the setting sun upon them. 2 2. You command a view far down over the valley of the Baths, (båthz). Leuk, (loik), a village and celebrated bathing-place of Switzerland, in the canton of Valais, on the Rhone, and about 5000 feet above the sea. Rhōne, with its villages and castles, and its mixture of rich farms and vast beds and heaps of mountain fragments, deposited by furious torrents. What affects the mind very powerfully on first entering upon these scenes, is the deep dark blue, so intensely deep and overshadowing, of the gorge at its upper end, and at the magnificent proud sweep of the granite barrier, which there shuts it in, apparently without a passage. The mountains rise like vast supernatural intelligences taking a material shape, and drawing around themselves a drapery of awful grandeur; there is a forehead of power and majesty, and the likeness of a kingly crown above it. 3. Amidst all the grandeur of this scenery, I remember to have been in no place more delighted with the profuse richness, delicacy, and beauty of the Al'pine flowers. The grass of the meadow slopes, in the gorge of the Dala, had a depth and power of verdure, a clear, delicious greenness, that in its effect upon the mind was like that of the atmosphere in the brightest autumnal morning of the year; or rather, perhaps, like the colors of the sky at sunset. There is no such grass-color in the world as that of these mountain meadows. It is just the same at the verge of the ice oceans of Mount Blanc. It makes you think of one of the points chosen by the Sacred Poët to illustrate the divine benevolence (and I had almost said, no man can truly understand why it was chosen, who has not traveled in Switzerland), "Who maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains." 4. And then the flowers, so modèst, so lovely, yet of such deep ex'quisite hue, enameled in the grass, sparkling ămidst it, "a starry multitude," underneath such awful brooding mountain forms and icy precipices-how beautiful! All that the poets have ever said or sung of daisies, vīölets, snow-drops, king-cups, primroses, and all modest flowers, is here outdone by the mute poëtry of the denizens of these wild pastures. Such a meadow slope as this, watered with pure rills from the glăciërs, would have set the mind of Edwards' at work in contemplation on the Jonathan Edwards, one of the first metaphysicians of his age, author of an "Essay on the Freedom of the Will," was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5th, 1703. He entered Yale College in his thirteenth year; graduated with the highest honors; and continued his residence in the institution for two years, for the study of theology. He first preached to a congregation in New York, in his nine |