all below her, and then returned, not to forget that sight, but to sing to her companions about it, and to dwell upon it till clear weather; so does our Faith, when all looks dark and discouraging here, when within and around there is nothing but mist and rain, rise and still rise, and soar onwards and upwards, till heaven is visible, and God is shining in the face of Jesus Christ; and then, as it were, comes back with glad tidings, to tell the soul to be of good cheer, for that heaven is not far off, and to sing, even like the nightingale, in the darkness and the rain, for that soon again there shall be day-break and fair weather. And the memory of one such view of the gates of heaven, with the bright Alps of truth glittering around you, is enough to sustain the soul through many a weary day of her pilgrimage. When you see the face of Christ, all the darkness is forgotten, and you wonder what it was you were doubting about, and what it was that could have made you so perplexed and desponding. Because it is mist and rain here below, you are not therefore to suppose that it is raining on the mountains; it is all clear there. And besides,

you know that the mist, the rain, the showers are necessary, and we cannot have them and the sunshine at the same time, though the showers that water the earth are as requisite to make it luxuriant, as the sun's clear shining after rain. Any time Faith may get upon the mountains and see the Alps, though it is not to be done without labor. There must be much prayer and spiritual discipline, before you find that your head is above the mist, and heaven is shining around you.

The poet Wordsworth has given two very vivid descriptions of these mist phenomena, under different aspects from that in which I witnessed them. The first is contained in his descriptive sketches of a pedestrian tour among the Alps.

"Tis morn: with gold the verdant mountain glows,
More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose.
Far stretched beneath the many-tinted hills

A mighty waste of mist the valley fills,

A solemn sea! whose vales and mountains round
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound.
A gulph of gloomy blue, that opens wide
And bottomless, divides the midway tide.
Like leaning masts of stranded ships appear

The pines, that near the coast their summits rear.
Of cabins, woods and lawns a pleasant shore
Bounds calm and clear the chaos still and hoar.
Loud through that midway gulph ascending, sound,
Unnumbered streams with hollow roar profound.
Mount through the nearer mist the chant of birds,
And talking voices, and the low of herds,
The bark of dogs, the drowsy tinkling bell,

And wild-wood mountain lutes of saddest swell."

But this extract is not to be compared for power to the following from the same poem, describing an Alpine sunset after a day of mist and storm upon the mountains :

"'Tis storm, and hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening murmur pour.
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight,
Dark is the region as with coming night,
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm
Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form.
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs, that o'er the lake recline.
Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned, that flame with gold.
Behind his sail the peasant tries to shun
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire

The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire!"

Mr. Coleridge used to adduce this extract, from a poem written in the earliest period of Wordsworth's career, as a rich prophecy of the fruits that would come from his maturer genius. And indeed superior to both these preceding passages is the other sketch of cloud scenery among the mountains, which is to be found in the second book of the Excursion. The scene, how. ever, is not in Switzerland, but in Scotland.

"A step,

A single step, that freed me from the skirts
Of the blind vapor, opened to my view
Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense, or by the dreaming soul.
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,

Was of a Mighty City,-boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far,
And self-withdrawn into a wonderous depth,
Far sinking into splendor without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt,
With battlements, that on their restless fronts
Bore stars,-illumination of all gems!

O! 'twas an unimaginable sight!

Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks and emerald turf, Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,

Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,

Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array

Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge

Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapped.

Right in the midst, where interspace appeared

Of open court, an object like a throne
Beneath a shining canopy of state

Stood fixed; and fixed resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,

But vast in size, in substance glorified;
Such as by Hebrew prophets were beheld

In vision-forms uncouth of mightiest power,
For admiration and mysterious awe.
Below me was the earth; this little vale
Lay low beneath my feet; 'twas visible-
I saw not, but I felt that it was there,
That which I saw was the revealed abode
Of spirits in beatitude"

CHAPTER IV.

Junction of the Arve and the Rhone.

THE junction of these two rivers, the Arve and the Rhone, is one of the pleasantest excursions in the neighborhood of Geneva. You go out of the gates of the city towards France, and you follow the course of the Rhone from country seat to country seat along its borders. The banks increase in height until they become craggy and precipitous, and from the overhanging cliffs you gaze down into the deep blue swift water at your feet, and you can at one view almost trace the river's course from where it issues from the city and the lake to the point immediately beneath you, where the brawling, furious, muddy Arve rushes into it. The Rhone is the biggest river, but the Arve is very pertinacious. The Rhone is majes

tic in its depth and volume, and as swift and graceful as an arrow in its flight; but the Arve is shallow and noisy, and makes a great sand-bank in the effort to come into the Rhone with as great space and pretension as possible. The Rhone is as clear and delicious an azure as the lake itself, almost as deep and bright and transparent a color as that of the heavens reflected in its bosom; but the Arve is as muddy as Acheron, and as cold as death. The Rhone comes from the crystal sleeping lake, the Arve from the restless grinding glaciers.

The Arve endeavors to rush into the Rhone almost at right angles, and to mingle its muddy, turbulent current with the crystal depths of the lake-river; but the Rhone refuses the mixture, and flies on by itself, so that the Arve is also compelled, though much mortified, to keep on its own side, being able to unite with the Rhone only in little eddies or ringlets, like the tresses of a fair-haired girl beside the curls of an Ethiopian. One hardly knows how the Rhone is able to conquer, but the

two rivers flow on without mingling, so that you have the cold mud on the one side, and the clear crystal on the other. From the commanding height, where you stand above the banks of the Rhone, you see with the utmost clearness the play, the sport, the coquetry, aversion and conflict of the waters, the hatred of amalgamation and annexation on the one side, and the desire for it on the other.

But you feel that the Rhone is clearly in the right, while the Arve is an impudent intruder. The Arve is the child of Night and Frost, while the Rhone is the daughter of the Day and of Sunshine. The Arve roars, discolored and angry, from its black ice-cavern, to the music of the Avalanche; the Rhone shoots, like a river of foaming light, from the quiet bosom of the lake, amid the busy hum of industry, to the song of the mountain breeze. The Arve strides sullenly like a beetle-browed villain; the Rhone dances like a mountain-maiden. Nature has forbid the banns between the two rivers, and all that the Arve can do is in vain, for his offers and his menaces are both rejected, and he has to pass on in cold and single blessedness.

Now, here is a curious symbol of many things; but I have thought that it shadows forth very fitly the forced union sometimes attempted between human philosophy and the word of God. Philosophy is meant to be the handmaiden, and not the partner, and wherever the marriage is attempted, all goes wrong. Human philosophy apart from revelation is almost mere mud. It has its origin in the debris of creation, amidst frozen glaciers, in the uncertainty of death and chaos, and when it would force its muddy guesses into competition and union with the Divine Word, the celestial stream refuses the connection, and flows on in its original purity and independence. A man may stand on the banks of the water of life, and drink and fill his pitcher only from that side, and then he has the truth pure and fresh from heaven. Or he may go where the philosophy and the truth are coquetting and conflicting, and he may drink of both together, and fill his pitcher with both together, and then he has generally as much mud as clear water, though he often thinks he has drawn up the truth much clearer than he who drank only of the crystal stream. Or he may go clean on