mountains and all hills, praise the Lord! There is but one verse in it inconsistent with the sublimity of the whole, and that is the appeal to Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, which is as if the bellows of an organ had burst in the middle of an anthem; he that can tell me what it means, will have more knowledge than any man I have yet encountered. My friend, though an English Clergyman, could not solve the problem. O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, praise ye the Lord! Who are, or were, these people, or are they saints or angels, or how came their names in the Benedicite? The Romish Missal, from which it was doubtless copied, may perhaps tell.

On the other side of the Maira, one of the most beautiful cascades in the world was falling from the mountains. There are four falls, close upon the foam of one another, two higher up, and two lower down. Seen against the setting sun, nothing could be more beautiful. Always falling, always falling, only beautiful by falling and being lost! Yet not lost, for all streams reach the sea, and so it is an emblem of those acts of faith and self-sacrifice, in which men lose their lives and find them, making as it were a perilous loss, for the kingdom of heaven, which is admired of the world, and rewarded in God for ever.

It was a solemn thing to stand upon the tomb of twenty-five hundred beings, all sepulchred alive. No efforts have ever discovered a trace of the inhabitants, not a bone, not a vestige. The mountain that covers them shall be thrown off at the resurrection, but never before. It was the Mount Conto that fell; the half that was left behind still rises abrupt and perpendicular over the mighty grave. It is singular enough that the town was situated itself on the tomb of another village, which had previously been overwhelmed by a similar catastrophe. For that reason it was named Pleurs, The Town of Tears. From the times of old, as often as in Italy one city has been buried, another has been built upon the very same spot, except indeed in the case of Pompeii, so that it is no uncommon thing for the same earth to be leased to the dead and the living.

The Town of Tears was one of the gayest, richest, laughing, pleasure-loving, joyous little cities in the kingdom. It might have been named Tears because it had laughed till it cried. It

had palaces and villas of rich gentlemen and nobles; for its lovely, romantic situation, and pleasant air, attracted the wealthy families to spend especially the summer months in so delightful a retreat. I wonder that no poet or romance-writer has made this scene the subject of a thrilling story. The day before the lid of their vast sepulchre fell, the people were as happy and secure as those of Pompeii, the night of the Vesuvian eruption-and much more innocent. There had been great rains. Vast masses of gravel were Joosened from the mountains, and overwhelmed some rich vineyards. The herdsmen came hurrying in to give notice that strange movements had been taking place, with alarming symptoms of some great convulsion; that there were great fissures and rents forming in the mountain, and masses of rock falling, just as the cornice of a building might topple down in fragments, before the whole wall tumbles. The cattle were seized with terror, and probably perceiving the trembling of the ground beneath their feet, fled bellowing from the region.

Nevertheless, there was no dream of what was to follow. The storm cleared brightly away, the sun rose and set on the fourth of September, as a bridegroom; the people lay down securely to rest, or pursued their accustomed festivities into the bosom of the night, with the plans for to-morrow; but that night the mountain fell and destroyed them all. At midnight a great roar was heard far over the country, and a shock felt as of an earthquake, and then a solemn stillness followed; in the morning a cloud of dust and vapor hung over the valley, and the bed of the Maira was dry. The river had been stopped by the falling of the mountain across its channel, and the town of Pleurs with the village of Celano had disappeared for ever. All the excavations of all the laborers that could be collected, failed to discover a single vestige of the inhabitants or of their dwelling-places. The miners could not reach the cathedral for its gold and jewels, and there they lie at rest, churches and palaces, villas and hovels, priests, peasants, and nobles, where neither gold, nor love, nor superstition, nor piety, can raise them from their graves, or have any power over them. How many a tale this green and rocky mound doth tell of expectations blasted, of plans suddenly broken, of domestic tragedies and comedies interrupted in the midst ;-of pleasure and

prayer, of loss and gain, of poverty and wealth, of sickness and health, all overtaken at once; the dying and the living cut off together, their death and burial being one and the same. They did eat, they drank, they were marrying and giving in marriage, as in the day when Noah entered into the ark. The gate of the Eternal World received a crowd of spirits; but that gate is always crowded, for the stream of life is not more full and uninterrupted on earth, than it is deep and ceaseless in its passage out of Time into Eternity. And not a man in all this tide of unbroken life (for dying is not ceasing to live but living anew), knows the hour of his destiny, though the tide is as immutable, as fixed, as regular, as the laws of the Universe, as Eternity itself. Therefore, sudden deaths, deaths by tempests, by avalanches, by "the all dreaded thunder-stroke," deaths at a word, and deaths without detected cause, in the midst of health, deaths like the burning of a forest, and deaths like the dropping of the autumn leaves, all have their place calmly and quietly in this tide of life, and as little interrupt or agitate its flow, as the ripples that die beneath the weary worn out winds upon its surface.

Almost as fixed as the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of the time of death, is the habit of procrastination in preparing for death. Men still reckon on time, amidst all warnings, and on a better time. "The lying spirit," remarks John Foster, "which had promised to meet them at the assigned spot, to conduct them thenceforward towards heaven, appears not on the ground when they arrive there, unless to tell them that another stage, still further on, will be more advantageous for commencing the enterprise." Youth, especially, deems it not probable that life will terminate in youth. And yet, many die young, and vanish as suddenly as a broken dream, so that there is no reliance to be placed even on the most favorable account of probabilities.

"And," says Foster, with that thoughtful and imperative solemnity, for which his sentences are often so remarkable, "a few examples, or even one, of the treacherousness of the calcu lation, should suffice to warn you not to hazard anything of great moment on so menacing an uncertainty. For, in all reason, when an infinitely important interest is depending, a mere possibility that your allotment may prove to be like theirs, is to be held

of far greater weight on the one side, than the alleged probability of the contrary is on the other. The possibility of dying imprepared, takes all the value from even the highest probability that there will be prolonged time to prepare: plainly, because there is no proportion between the fearfulness of such a hazard, and the precariousness of such a dependence. So that one day of the certain hazard may be safely asserted to be a greater thing against you, than whole imaginary years promised you by the probability, ought to be accounted of value for you."

Many a man is brought to the gates of death, and even of sudden death, and yet forgets it at once, so soon as he is brought back again. How beautiful is that old ode of Mason expressing a bet ter purpose in a like deliverance.

Methought Death laid his hands on me,
And did his prisoner bind;

And by the sound, methought I heard
His Master's feet behind.

Methought I stood upon the shore,

And nothing could I see,

But the vast ocean, with my eyes,-
A vast Eternity!

Methought I heard the midnight cry,
Behold the Bridegroom comes!
Methought I was called to the bar,

Where souls receive their dooms.
The world was at an end to me,
As if it all did burn:

But lo! there came a voice from heaven,
Which ordered my return.

Lord, I returned at thy command,

What wilt thou have me do?

O let me wholly live to Thee,
To whom my life I owe!
Fain would I dedicate to Thee
The remnant of my days:

Lord, with my life renew my heart,

That both thy name may praise.

CHAPTER XLIII.

Beauty of the Lake of Como.-Como to Milan.-Leonardo da Vinci.

How strange it is that the beauty of Italy is so mingled with decay and death! Between Chiavenna and the Lake of Como, if you stop anywhere by night, you do it at your peril. The malaria fever lies in ambush where the mountain streams from the Val Bregaglia, the vale of Lira, and the Valteline, have slowly intruded their marshy shoals in plains that may of old have been covered by the Lake of Como. We started from Chiavenna, through this desolate region, early in the morning by the diligence, and in a few hours arrived at Colico on the Lake, for the purpose of embarking in the steamer, that daily about noon departs for Como. You bid adieu to the companionship of mountains, that have so long been personal friends, with great regret, though you are launched upon one of the most beautiful water-scenes in the world, and one of the grandest also; for the mountains that invest the Lake of Como give it an air of sublimity and grandeur as impressive as its beauty is attractive. It is about forty miles in length, bordered by a mountain landscape of perpetual richness, magnificence, and beauty. But let no man, who has leisure to explore its beauties, cross it in a steamer. There are row-boats and sail-boats, and you should take a day or two with a dear friend, or in quiet solitude, to run into its nooks, its enclosures, to land at its picturesque cliffs and recesses, and to watch the clouds, the rocks, and the foliage reflected in its bosom, with nothing but the dipping oar to break its silence, or ruffle its smoothness. There is great enjoyment in such a sail, and it is only thus that you can become acquainted with the genius loci, the soul and spirit of the lake and the landscape.

At the town of Como you feel that you are in Italy, and how vast the change from the mountains of Switzerland to this sunny