Petrarch once climbed a high mountain with a little volume of Augustine's Confessions in his pocket. At the summit, after feasting himself with the landscape, he opened the book to read, when the first passage that caught his eye was the following: "Men travel far to climb high mountains, to observe the majesty of the ocean, to trace the sources of rivers, but they neglect themselves." Petrarch closed the book, and meditated upon the lesson. If I have undergone so much labor in climbing this mountain, said he, that my body might be nearer to heaven, what ought I not to do, what labor is too great to undergo, that my soul may be received there for ever! This thought in the Poet's mind was both devout and poetical, but it rises in the depths of many a soul, without being reduced to practice. So much easier is it to go on pilgrimage with the body, than to climb spiritually the hill Difficulty; so much easier to rise towards heaven with the feet, than to carry the heart thither.

Why should a step of the soul upward be more difficult than one of the body? It is because of the burden of sin, and its downward tendency. Nevertheless, there is this consolation, that with every step of the soul upward the fatigue becomes less, and the business of climbing grows from a labor into a habit, till it seems as if wings were playing at the shoulders; while in climbing with the body there is no approximation to a habit, and the fatigue is ever increasing. The nearer the soul rises to God, the more rapid and easy is its motion towards him. How beneficent is this! How grand and merciful that "Divine agency,' says John Foster, "which apprehends a man, as apostolic language expresses it, amidst the unthinking crowd, and leads him into serious reflection, into elevated devotion, into progressive virtue, and finally into a nobler life after death.'

"When he has long been commanded by this influence, he will be happy to look back to its first operations, whether they were mingled in early life almost insensibly with his feelings, or came on him with mighty force at some particular time, and in connection with some assignable and memorable circumstance, which was apparently the instrumental cause. He will trace all the progress of this his better life, with grateful acknowledgment to the Sacred Power, which has advanced him to a deci

siveness of religious habit, that seems to stamp eternity on his character. In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague, than ever afflicted Egypt; in religious character it is a grand felicity. The devout man exults in the indications of his being fixed and irretrievable. He feels this confirmed habit as the grasp of the hand of God which will never let him go. From this advanced state he looks with firmness and joy on futurity, and says, I carry the eternal mark upon me that I belong to God; I am free of the universe; and I am ready to go to any world to which he shall please to transmit me, certain that everywhere, in height or depth, he will acknowledge me for ever."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Upper Hasli, and the river Aar. Falls of the Aar. Desolation of the Pass.

Now we overlook the Vale of the Upper Hasli, with the Aar winding through it. As I sit upon a rock by the way-side and sketch these words, the air is full of melody, the birds are singing thoughtfully, the large grasshoppers make a sonorous merry chirping, and the bells of the goats are tinkling among the herbage and trees on the sides of the mountains. The dewy mist has not yet passed from the grass, but lies in a thin, transparent haze over the meadow. Half way across lies the deep shadow of a mighty mountain peak, over which the sun is rising; but beyond this shade the chalets and clumps of trees are glittering and smoking in the morning sunshine. The mist-clouds are now lingering only within the ridges of the farthest mountains, while the whole grand outline cuts the deep cloudless blue of heaven. The shafts of light shoot down into the vale, past the angular peaks and defiles. No language can tell the beauty of the view.

The

I could sit here for hours, not desiring to stir a step farther. mind and heart are filled with its loveliness, and one cannot help blessing God for the great and pure enjoyment of beholding it. If his grace may but sanctify it, it will be like a sweet chapter of his word, and one may go on his way, refreshed as Pilgrim was, when he had gazed over the distant Celestial glory from the Delectable mountains.

See the smoke rising from the chalets before you! The sunlight is absolutely a flood of glory over this scene. Oh how lovely! And still, as I sit and write, new shades of beauty come into view. And now a few steps farther, and what a new and perfect picture! The vale is almost a complete circle hemmed in by mountains, with the Aar glittering across it like a belt of liquid silver. And now we come down into the valley. How

rich the vegetation, impearled with the morning dew! And the little village of Hasli-Grund just at the base of the mountain, with a cloud of smoky light upon it, how beautiful! Does it not seem as if here could be happiness, if anywhere on earth? But happiness is a thing within; you cannot see it, though you may guess at it, and say within yourself, One might be happy here. It takes many things to constitute the beautiful appearances that make a stranger stop and exclaim, How lovely! Whereas, it takes but few things to make up real happiness, if all within is right. A crust of bread, a pitcher of water, a thatched roof, and love;—there is happiness for you, whether the day be rainy or sunny. It is the heart that makes the home, whether the eye of the stranger rest upon a potato-patch or a flower-garden. Heart makes home precious, and it is the only thing that can.

From this point the mountain passes look as winding up to Paradise; the broken masses of verdure around you are like that "verdurous wall" round Eden, over which Satan made such a pernicious leap. Pass out from the valley, and the scene changes into one of savage wildness and grandeur; you are wandering among rough, broken mountains, with fearful craggy gorges, through which the Aar furiously rushes; the guide tells you of perilous falls in tempests, and of deaths by drowning and by the avalanche; and, to confirm his words, ridge after ridge of barren, savage, scathed peaks present their bare rock ribs, down which are perpetually thundering the avalanches, as if to dispute with the torrent the right of roaring through the valley. Piles of chaotic, rocky fragments, over which the path clambers, bespeak the dates of desolating storms. Now and then the eye and the mind are relieved by the greenness of a forest of firs, but in general the pass is one awful sweep of desolation and sterile sublimity. It is like the soul of a sinner deserted of God, while the thundering torrent, madly plunging, and never at rest, is like the voice of an awakened angry conscience in such a soul.

Amidst this desolate and savage scenery, after travelling some four or five hours, with a single interval of rest at Guttanen, we come suddenly upon the celebrated falls of the Aar. There is a point on which they are visible from the verge of the gorge below, before arriving at Handek, but it is by no means so good as

the points of view above. These points are very accessible, and from a bridge thrown directly over the main fall, you may look down into the abyss where the cataract crashes. A storm of wind and rain rushes furiously up from the spray, but when the sun is shining, it is well worth a thorough wetting, to behold the exquisitely beautiful rainbows which circle the fall beneath. A side torrent comes down from another ravine on the right, meeting the Aar fall diagonally, after a magnificent leap by itself over the precipice, so that the cataract is two in one. The height of the fall being about two hundred feet, when the Aar is swollen by rain, this must be by far the grandest and most beautiful cataract in Switzerland. The lonely sublimity of the scenery makes the astounding din and fury of the waters doubly impressive.

A short distance from the falls, a single chalet, which itself is the inn, constitutes the whole village of Handek. From this place up to the Grimsel, the pass increases if possible in wildness and desolation. Vegetation almost entirely ceases. The fir, that beautiful emblem of the true Christian, as it has been called, satisfied with so little of earth, and rising straight to heaven, can no more find a footing. Gloomy bare mountains, silent and naked as death, frown over the pathway, and you seem to be coming to the outermost limits of creation.

The path crosses a singular, vast, smooth ledge of rock, called the Höllenplatte, nearly a quarter of a mile in extent, about two miles above the Falls, said to have been the bed of an old glacier, and to have become worn smooth and polished by the attrition of the ice-mountain. The path is hewn along the edge of the precipice. Your guide-book tells you that it is "prudent to dismount here, and cross this bad bit of road on foot, since the path runs by the edge of the precipice, and the surface of the rock, though chiselled into grooves, to secure a footing for the horses, is very slippery. A single false step might be fatal to man and beast, precipitating both into the gulf below: and the slight wooden rail, which is swept away almost every winter, would afford but little protection." A pedestrian, having no care of a mule, is very independent of all these dangers, though he would not wish to cross this place in a tempest; but the guide