The lesson of the quiet sail is lost on board the anxious steamer with her noisy paddles; but any traveller may enjoy it, if he will take the time, and few things in nature can be more lovely than a sail or a walk along the Lake of Geneva in some of its exquisite sunsets. Meditation there "may think down hours to moments," and there is something both solemn and melancholy, in the fall of the curtain of evening over such a scene, which quickens the inward sense of one's immortality and accountability, and irresistibly carries the heart up to God in prayer.

Our boat lands her passengers in small lighters at Villeneuve, where we take a diligence for St. Maurice, some three hours' drive up the Valley of the Rhone. The river runs into the Lake at Villeneuve, and out of it at Geneva; though why the radiant sparkling stream, that issues with such swiftness and beauty, should bear the same name with the torrent of mud that rolls into it, it is difficult to say. Nevertheless, a Christian bears the same name after his conversion that he did before; and the new and beautiful characteristics of this river, when it rushes from the lake at the republican and Protestant end of it, might well remind you of the change, which takes place between the character of a depraved man, and a regenerated child of God. Our hearts come down wild and ferocious from the mountains, bearing with them rocks and mud, casting up, as the Word of God saith, mire and dirt. So are we in our native, graceless depravity. It is only by flowing into the crystal Lake of Divine Love, that we leave our native impurities all behind us, on the shore of the world, and then when we reappear, when we flow forth again from this blessed Baptism, we are like the azure, arrowy Rhone, reflecting the hues of heaven. Then again the muddy Arve from the mountains falls into us, and other worldly streams join us, so that before we get to the sea we have, alas, too often, deep stains still of the mud of our old depravity. The first Adam goes with us to the sea, though much veiled and hidden; but the last Adam is to have the victory. Some streams there are, however, that flow all the way from the Lake to the Sea, quite clear and unmingled. The course of such a regenerated stream through the world is the most beautiful sight this side Heaven.

The immense alluvial deposit from the Rhone, where it pours

into the Lake, makes the valley for some distance from Villeneuve a dreary bog, which every year is usurping something more of dominion; but you soon get into wilder scenery, which becomes extremely beautiful before reaching St. Maurice. Here Mr. Rogers's "key unlocks a kingdom," for the mountains on either side so nearly shut together, that there is only the width of the river and the narrow street between them. You cross a bridge upon a single arch, and find yourself wondering at the great strength of the pass, and entering a village, which is like a stone basket hanging to a perpendicular wall. Farther on, an old hermitage high up overhangs the road, like a grey wasp's nest, under the eaves of the mountain. Hereabouts you cross a vast mound of rock-rubbish, made up of the ruins of one of the various avalanches which from time to time bury whole fields of the verdant Alpine Valleys, and sometimes whole villages. This was an avalanche of mud, glacier, granite, and gravel, which came down from the lofty summit of the Dent du Midi in 1835, not swiftly, but like thick glowing lava, and covered the valley for a length of nine hundred feet.

At St. Maurice you pass from the Canton de Vaud to the Romish Canton of the Valais, a transition perceptible at once in the degradation of the inhabitants. We took a char-à-banc from St. Maurice to Martigny, about eleven miles, arriving at seven o'clock in the evening, having visited the superb cascade formerly called the Pissevache, on our way. It only wants a double volume of water to make it sublime, for it rolls out of a fissure in the mountain three hundred feet high, and makes a graceful spring, clear of all the crags, for more than a hundred and twenty feet, and then, when it has recovered, so to speak, from the fright of such a fall, runs off in a clear little river to join the muddy Rhone. So, sometimes, a youth from the country, who had, at first, all the freshness and purity of home and of a mother's love about him, gets lost in the corruption of a great city.

Our pedestrianizing this day, you perceive, was accomplished first in the steamer, second in the diligence, third in the char-àbanc. For myself, having got wet by a furious cloud of spray, which the wind blew over me as I advanced too near under the water-fall, I did really walk the greater part of the way from

thence to Martigny, about four miles, leaving my friend to enjoy the char-à-banc alone, and to order our supper when he arrived at the inn. This char-à-banc, so much used in Switzerland, is a hard leathern sofa for two, or at most three, in which you are placed as in the stocks, and trundled sideways upon wheels. It is a droll machine, somewhat as if a very short Broadway omnibus, being split in two lengthwise, each half, provided with an additional pair of wheels, should set up for itself. It was in this conveyance that we rode, while travelling in the Canton de Valais, for no one would dream of pedestrianizing here, unless indeed along the sublime pass of the Simplon between Briegg and Domodossola. I had moreover passed through the Valley of the Rhone before into Italy, and deferred my pedestrianizing till I should come upon a new route over mountains so rough, that my companion with his mule could go no faster than I on foot. He preferred to ride always; I chose to walk, whenever the scenery was sublime enough to justify it, and the road rough enough to make it agreeable.

The evening at Martigny was transcendently beautiful, the weather being fine, the atmosphere wildly, spiritually bright, and the moon within one night of her fulness; "the moon above the tops of the snow-shining mountains." We ascended the hill near Martigny to the picturesque old Feudal Tower, by this moonlight, and rarely in my wanderings have I witnessed a scene to be compared with this. Looking down the valley, the outline is bounded by a snowy ridge of great beauty, but in the direction of the Grand St. Bernard mountains of dark verdure rise into the air like pyramidal black wedges cleaving the heavens. We are high above the village, and on one side can look down sheer into the roaring torrent, many hundred feet; it makes you dizzy to look. The ruins of the castle, the verdure around it, the village below, the silence of night, the summer softness of the air, combined with an almost autumnal brightness, the mountains in their grandeur sleeping in such awful, such solemn repose, the distant landscape, so indistinctly beautiful, the white rays of the moon falling in such sheets of misty transparence over it, and the glittering snowy peaks which lift themselves before you like grey prophets of a thousand years, yea, like messengers from Eter

nity, is there anything needed to make this one of the most magnificent scenes, and most impressive too, that we shall be likely to find in all Switzerland?

"A deep

And solemn harmony pervades

The hollow vale from steep to steep,

And penetrates the glades."

The night is so beautiful, that it is difficult to intrude upon it by going to bed; and yet, if travellers would be up betimes in the morning, they must sleep at night. But all night long methinks one could walk by such a moon, amidst such glorious mountains, and not be wearied. Some years ago we passed this same valley in a very different season, when a great part of the Swiss world was covered deep with snow, and the frost was so sharp, that the trodden path creaked under our feet, and our breath almost froze into little snow-clouds in the air. The scenery then was of a savage sublimity, but now, how beautiful!

CHAPTER III.

Ecclesiastical despotism in the Valais. Measures of the Jesuits.

We started at six in the morning, again in a char-à-banc, for Sion and Sierre, twenty-seven miles. A party of lads from the Jesuit Seminary at Fribourg were at the door, under the care of their instructors, accoutred for the day's pedestrian excursion. They spend some weeks in this manner, attended by the priests; but learning lessons of freedom from wild nature, drinking in the pure mountain air, and gaining elasticity of body and spirit by vigorous exercise. They were going to Chamouny. Between Martigny and Sion, our man of the char-à-banc pointed out to us the scene of a recent desperate conflict between the liberalists and despotists of the Canton, part of which ille fuit, and the whole of which he saw, being on the Sion side when they burned the beautiful bridge which the furious torrent had so long respected. The matter has ended in the establishment of a priestal republican despotism, under which the protestant religion is proscribed, its exercise forbidden even in private, the protestant schools are broken up, and intolerance to the heart's content of Romanism forms the political and religious régime of the Canton.

The Bishop or Archbishop of Sion, which is the chief town. of the Canton du Valais, presides over the general assembly.

Here is an opportunity of instruction for impartial observers, which they ought not to let pass. It is always interesting to see a fair experiment, on a questioned subject, either in chemistry or morals. You must have a large laboratory, good retorts, furnaces, crucibles, blowpipes, and so forth, and let the chemical agents work without hindrance. This Canton in Switzerland is a grand laboratory, where the Jesuits, unimpeded, have just demonstrated the nature of their system. They have played out the play, and all who please may satisfy themselves as to the residuum. In point of oppression, it is remarked abroad, they have