is allowed in the streets after ten o'clock in the evening, nor any noises capable of disturbing good people who wish to sleep. Vagabonds are to be carried to watch-houses, and nothing but honest callings are to be permitted, and decent moral amusements for recreation. All persons are forbidden to expose for show any images in wood or wax, of Venus, or any great notable assassins, or men famous for their crimes in any way. All the world knows that Venus is a great assassin, well deserving of capital punishment; and if the priests had stated that this was one of the laws which Calvin caused to be framed while residing in the city, it might be easier believed than their tale of Calvin raising the dead. In these laws the utmost vigilance is enjoined against the introduction into the city of books or tracts of any kind tending injuriously towards the Holy Catholic Roman Apostolic Church Religion or Government. The cleanness of the streets may possibly be accounted for by a law that every person shall be held to keep the street clean before his own door, carefully removing all the dirt, and preventing its accumulation. This is somewhat different from our laws in New York, where the swine have a premium as city scavengers.

There is a most curious propensity in the lower orders to associate a foreign language, or the supposed ignorance of their own, with deafness. Most persons have probably met with instances of this, but I never knew a more singular example than that of a peasant in Aoste, who, seeing that I was a foreigner, stepped up to me, and answered a question I had asked him, with a shout such as you would pour into the ear of a person incurably deaf. He evidently supposed, that being a foreigner, I had lost my hearing, or rather that I possessed the sense of hearing only for my own language, and could understand his only when it thundered. On this principle, all a man needs in travelling through foreign countries would be an ear-trumpet, instead of the grammar and diction

ary.

From the Cité d'Aoste to Courmayeur, at the end of the valley near Mont Blanc, it is about twenty-seven miles. I had a return char-à banc entirely to myself, for the very small sum

of five francs.

AOSTE TO COURMAYEUR.

143

The ride and the views of Mont Blanc enjoyed
For twelve miles the road winds

in it were worth five hundred.
along the bottom of the valley, sometimes at the edge of a tor-
rent, sometimes crossing it, through scenes of the richest ve-
getation. The openings of rich valleys here and there lead off
the eye as in a perspective wilderness of wildness and beauty;
and the grandeur of the mountains, snow-topped even in Au
gust, encreases as the valley narrows towards Mont Blanc.

About half way up the valley from Aoste to Courmayeur is a little vagabond village named Ivrogne, I know not on what principle or for what reason so baptized, unless it were from the fact that you pass immediately to a point where, in the language of Lord Byron, the scene is of such effulgence, that you are well nigh "dazzled and drunk with beauty." For, a little beyond this village of Ivrogne, Mont Blanc bursts upon you with indescribable sublimity. Your weather must indeed be fine, and you must be there at a particular hour, for the most favourable position of the sun upon the scene; but when these requisites concur, nothing in nature can be more glorious than the vision, which I had almost said blazes in floods of living light before you.

I have seen Mont Blanc from all the best points of view, from the Breven, the Flegére, from St. Martin, in fine weather in August, with every advantage, and from the Col de Balme on a day in October so glorious that I then thought never could be presented, at any other season, such a juncture of elements in one picture, of such unutterable sublimity and beauty. But all things taken together, no other view is to be compared for its magnificence with this in the Val d'Aoste. The valley from this point up to Courmayeur, more than twelve miles, forms a mighty infolding perspective, of which the gorges of the mountains, inlaid and withdrawing one behind another, like ridges of misty light, lead off the eye into a wondrous depth and distance, with Mont Blanc completely filling up the close. This scene, by the winding of your way, bursts almost as suddenly upon you as if the heavens were opened. The poet Danté may give you some little impression of the glory.

"As when the lightning, in a sudden sheen
Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes
The visive spirits, dazzled and bedimmed;
So, round about me, fulminating streams
Of living radiance played, and left me swathed
And vailed in dense impenetrable blaze.
I looked,

And in the likeness of a river saw

Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves
Flashed up effulgence, as they glided on
'Twixt banks on either side painted with spring
Incredible how fair: and from the tide

There ever and anon outstarting flew

Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers
Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold.
Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again
Into the wondrous flood..

How vast a space
Of ample radiance! Yet, nor amplitude,
Nor height impeded, but my view with ease
Took in the full dimensions of that joy."

PARADISE, Canto XXX..

If to this you please to add Milton's description of the gate in heaven's wall, as seen out of Chaos, you will have, not indeed an accurate picture, but a semblance, an image by approxima tion, of the manner in which Mont Blanc may rise before the vision.

"Far distant he descries,

Ascending by degrees magnificent

Up to the wall of heaven, a structure high,
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace gate
With frontispiece of diamond and of gold
Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems
The portal shone, inimitable on earth

By model or by shading pencil drawn.

The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending, bands

Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram in the field of Luz,
Dreaming by night under the open sky,

And waking cried, This is the gate of heaven."

1

MONT BLANC FROM THE UPPER VAL D'AOSTE.

145

CHAPTER XXII.

MONT BLANC FROM THE UPPER VAL D'AOSTE.

ALMOST every separate view of Mont Blanc from different vales and mountains has some peculiarity to characterize it. I never obtained so complete an idea of the vastness of its slopes of snow, and the immensity of its glaciers as when gazing on it in a fine day from the summit of the Flegére in the vale of Chamouny. But that day the peculiar interest of the view was derived from the fact that a number of travellers could be seen ascending Mont Blanc, and it was in fact particularly on that account that at that time we made the ascent of the Flegére. The French government had sent several scientific gentlemen to climb the mountain, remain upon its summit several nights, and fill the world with the glory of their observations. They had made several most perillous and unsuccessful trials to accomplish their mission, but Mont Blanc always proved too surly for them, till there came an interval of fine weather; then, it being known in the valley that they were on their way up the mountain to the number of about forty, guides and all, many of the travellers then in the valley seized this opportunity to ascend the Flegére and have a look at the French voyageurs in their perillous expedition. And intensely interesting it was to look at them with the telescope, about two thirds up the mountain, creeping along like emmits, in a single file behind. one another, over the surface of the ice and snow.

Now they seemed hanging to the face of one precipice, and suspended over the awful gulf of another. Now they wound carefully and painfully along the brink of an enormous glacier, where a slide of snow from above, or the separation of the mass over which they were treading would have carried them all to destruction. Again they were seen higher up, evidently engaged in cutting footsteps in the steep ice path, and making such slow progress, that the eye can scarcely distinguish their motion at all. Then we would lose sight of them entirely, and again they would appear in another direction, having surmoun

ted the obstacles successfully, but again we saw them in a position evidently so hazardous, that from moment to moment it would have been no surprise to see them fall. The exclamation of almost every individual looking at them was this, What a foolhardy enterprise! What fools to risk their lives in such an undertaking! And yet the danger is probably not so extreme as it appeared to us, although indeed the hazards of the ascent of Mont Blanc are at all times very great, while there is really no sufficient recompense to the traveller on the summit, for the peril and fatigue encountered in reaching it.

It is like those heights of ambition so much coveted in the world, and so glittering in the distance, where, if men live to reach them, they cannot live upon them. They may have all the appliances and means of life, as these French savans carried their tents to pitch upon the summit of Mont Blanc; but the peak that looked so warm and glittering in the sunshine, and of such a rosy hue in the evening rays, was too deadly cold, and swept by blasts too fierce and cutting; they y were glad to relinquish the attempt and come down. The view of the party a few hours below the summit was a sight of deep inte rest. So was the spectacle of the immeasurable ridges and fields, gulfs and avalanches, heights and depths, unfathomable chasms and impassable precipices of ice and snow, of such daz zling whiteness, of such endless extent, in such gigantic masses. The telescope sweeps over them, and they are brought startlingly near to the eye, and the spectator feels grateful that neither himself nor any of his friends are compelled to hazard their lives amidst such perillous sublimities of nature, whether in individual or governmental scientific curiosity.

The views of Mont Blanc from the Flegére, from the Breven, and from the Col de Balme, might each seem, under favourable circumstances, so sublime and glorious, that nothing could exceed them, or cause any increase in their sublimity. But Mont Blanc from the Italian side, from the Val d'Aoste, is presented to the eye in a greater unity of sublimity, with a more undivided and overwhelming impression than from any other point.. In the vale of Chamouny you are almost too near; you are under the mountain, and not before it; and from the heights