From The Spectator. THE ALPS.* mountain slope, interrupted by no rocks or cliffs, and thus of hill-like formation. The fall of an avalanche, of any kind, is in form MR. STEPHEN has completed worthily a almost exactly like a waterfall completely task which ought to recommend him to all broken into foam. The fall is generally true lovers of nature. Fine writing about heard sooner than seen. Startled by the scenery is common enough, as we know to thundering fall, a stranger not acquainted our cost, but writing like M. Berlepsch's upwards, and seeks in the atmosphere for with the awful phenomenon generally looks which, while up to the level of its subject, the thunder-clouds which produce these never degenerates into tawdriness, is a real sounds of thunder; but peace is in the deep and most unfrequent luxury. This work is blue ether-not a cloud is swimming in the more like a great poem than an ordinary aërial ocean. Now the roar rolls through book of travels, yet every description is the valleys, and renews in stronger swells minutely or even severely faithful, and the the waves of sound, while the eye sinking impression of sublimity which the best pas- mountain a smoking dustlike cloud moved lower, perceives on the silver mantle of the sages convey is created not by the words by the breeze, and close below it a sliding themselves, but by the perfect accord be- motion in the slopes of névé which just between the words and the living grandeur of fore were hanging in the stillness of death. the scenes M. Berlepsch intends them to por- With apparent slowness, at measured intertray. Nature in the Alps is so magnificent, vals, the snow cascade sinks over the rocky her power so visible and so awe-inspiring, walls like broad ribands of satin, plunges that any description, if it be but accurate, is more deeply over the cliffs, bursts into round sure to produce that sense of the powerless- cloud, like the intervals of a cataract, or woolly foam-bows and fluttering curls of ness of the human race, that ground tone of loses itself for seconds in concealed gulfs, mental horror, which is at once the most fas- and sinks down, repeating the spectacle from cinating and the most permanent impression step to step, till it comes to rest on level Alp created by mountain chains. Most describ-meadows or in deep basins. On the disapers, however, fail in transferring this sensa-pearance of the apparent stream, the rolling tion to their pages, either because, like Pro-thunders which accompany the fall cease fessor Forbes, they attend too exclusively to its cause; or because, like most of the recent travellers, they are so occupied with the effect itself, that they analyze their own emotions instead of painting the scenes which produced them. We have no apology to offer for the long extracts, which we usually avoid, for no criticism of ours could interest our readers, or describe the book so thoroughly, as, for example, this account of the formation and descent of the summer avalanches : also, and the traveller becomes convinced that the two agencies have a mutual relation to each other. But where the seeming stream of dust rolled down, there is now a dirty pale line in the midst of the dazzling snow, showing that something more than snow, that earth and fragments of rock, must have come down to leave such traces. "Such is the picture of a summer 'ground avalanche,' painted from a distant and secure point of view. If one could approach nearer to the falling avalanche, with a telescope of greater magnifying and defining power, it would show quite different forms, and, like the unsuspected cellular tissue of organisms "The picture which fancy has built of the under the microscope, would suddenly disappearance of an avalanche during its fall play boundless snowfields, in whose embrace is as erroneous as the notions as to its vari- cyclopean fragments of rock, massive blocks ous causes. It is not a round ball, as people of ice, and torn-up sheets of turf, would fly fancy, which in its place of formation is the down shrieking and howling. What appears size of a cauliflower, and increases by rolling to the naked eye like harmless descending over and by the adherence of particles of masses of foam, becomes a madly raging snow, till at length it forms a ball of colos- fury when seen from near; for, as is usual sal diameter, which is not crushed till it in the Alps, we have no sufficient measure bursts in the valley like a bomb: such a progressive spherical form, as one sees made by boys in the lowlands at the beginning of winter, when they want to build a snow man, would at least require a uniform inclined The Alps. By H. Berlepsch. Translated by the Rev. L. Stephen. Longman and Co. of distance by which to judge the heights over whose unbroken surface the avalanche is breaking. If we subtract the approximate height of the place where the avalanche buried itself from the height of the point from which it fell, and divided the resulting difference by the sum of the seconds during which it lasted, we should gain a quotient of speed for the enormous rapidity of fall, which would at the same time explain the thunder of its descent." Or the following description of the surface sights and sounds upon a glacier : "The summit of Mont Blanc, Tödi, Mont Velan, Cima de Jazzi, etc., presents soft, round, vaulted, snowy cushions on a broad base, affording perfectly safe resting-places. The Galenstock (11,840 feet) displays a softly rounded cupola of snow towards the west; but on the east sinks suddenly and almost vertically downwards for some thousand feet. The top of the Gross Glockner, in Tyrol, is an uneven rocky space of chloritic schist, giving room for twelve persons at the outside. The southern point of the Schreckhorn (eighty-five feet lower than the higher northern, still unscaled summit) has a surface of some four square feet, in the shape of a bow or semi-circle, with the convexity towards the north. On the other hand, the top of the Finsteraarhorn is formed by an undulating ridge, some twenty feet long, and a foot or a foot and a half in breadth, sinking steeply on both sides. The Jungfrau presents a similar form: it falls in a hard snow ridge, like the roof of a tent, at an inclination of some 60 deg. or 70 deg., with a breadth of some six to ten inches, and the icy roof of the great Rinderhorn is everywhere so awfully sharp that the boldest mountaineer would be unable, from the steep slope of the ridge, to ascend it astride or to slide down it. The Bernina affords just room enough for three persons to stand close together, and the Grand Combin runs into an absolute snowy point, upon which one "Let us go on! Now at last we can get on to the glacier. It is near midday, and the sun is hot. How very different from what we expected is the tolerable level glacier surface. It is furrowed by thousands and thousands of little channels, which have formed crossing and meandering paths. The little watery veins of the icy water, of diamond clearness, scarcely one degree above freezing, hasten down to the greater brooklike furrows, whose bed always consists of transparent glacier ice. These brooks, after a short course, fall with a roar into deep funnel-shaped holes, called 'mulden' or 'moulins, into which they disappear without leaving a trace. There are secret canals which reach in all kinds of windings and branchings down to the rocky ground of the glacier, and supply the stream which pours forth from the glacier gate. The gently vaulted surface of the glacier glistens and shines with the reflection of the sun's rays from the smooth flooded ice. An infinite feverish trembling is spread over the whole bulk of the ice, so that a glimmering arises as of myriads of particles. It is quite easy to walk with a firm foot and safe tread over The account of all Alpine specialities, the the shining, perspiring glacier; but if you do not tread firmly, and take some care not glaciers, and the forests, landslips and to slip, you cannot be certain of not sitting storms, is as full as it is beautiful, and we down in the wet every two or three minutes. extract a splendid description of the landThis strange vivacity, this humming, sing-slip which on the 2d of September, 1806, ing, rustling in the network of channels that desolated the village of Goldau, lying on the spreads over the glacier's surface, lasts as Rossberg :long as the sun sends down its frost-dissolving rays. As soon as these sink behind the mountains, the little life grows dumb, the frozen deathlike breeze moves over the icy desert and binds the trickling drops again into crystals, and before it is night, the noiseless silence of the grave is lying over this corner of the Alps." M. Berlepsch adds nothing to our knowledge of the movement of glaciers, only suggesting very casually that the original motive power is the pressure of huge masses of snow behind them; but his description of their forms and effects is the most vivid we have seen. So in the account of an ascent. But we prefer to take a short paragraph describing the summits of the best-known peaks: dares not venture." "Late in the afternoon (it had struck a quarter to five on the church clock at Arth), suddenly, a vast chasm opened half-way up the gentle slopes of the mountain in the Rüthe' meadow, which grew visibly broader, deeper, and longer. The surrounding turf turned over, so that it showed the red soil as if it had been plowed. At the same time the pine forests on the same level became unnaturally animated. At first the tall slender pine trunks waved gently to and fro as if touched by an invisible hand, much as in summer the wind produces waves in the half-ripe corn. This wavelike motion increased, but in opposing lines, so that the tree-tops struck against and through each other with an irregular and vehement motion. With harsh cries, ravens, crows, jays, and other birds that harbored in the woods, was at that time dotted over with detached houses; and beneath in the valley, between the lakes of Zug and Lowertz, lay the rich villages of Goldau, Busingen, and Lowertz. Under the ruins four hundred and fifty-seven men found a common grave.” flew upwards, and hastened in flying swarms | destroyed. For the whole slope of the Rossin a south-westerly direction to the forests berg, almost up to the Gnypenspitz, whose on the slopes of the Rigi. Now the vibrat- highest point is adorned by a wooden cross, ing and jerking motion, the wavelike rising and falling passed on to the grass-covered land. It looked as if gigantic moles were burrowing under it. At the same time a gentle sliding and slipping of the whole upper slopes commenced, and became constantly plainer and more rapid. The pine forests struggled to follow the hurried motion, and About one-half of the book is devoted to looked according to the expression of the sketches of mountain life in the Alps. The people who watched the whole terrible phe- English idea seems to be that danger is connomenon from beginning to end-something fined to the guides and the chamois hunters, like hair stroked against the grain. "These alarming phenomena steadily in- but, in truth, life in these regions is full of creased. In even larger circles, and through-horror for almost every man, from the goatout a greater extent, meadows and grass- herds who battle with the eagles on the lands, orchards, houses, and stables, with heights, to the timber-floaters who convey men and cattle, were drawn along into the the trees of the mountain forest to the plain, fearful descent. The people who saw the through never ending "lignoducts," changround on which they had been born and nels of wood flung across hillock and precigrown up give way under their feet, started up in horror and fled from their homes. pice, from the hill which the trees cover to Then was heard a thundering roar, as if the the mountain torrent which is to float them old foundations of the earth's crust had given to a market. Even in the villages life is to way, and a sharp crackling as if a thousand- the idea of the men of the plains very horpointed sheaf of lightnings from the threat-rible. Most of these hamlets are buried in ening clouds had struck the supporting pil- a seclusion to which that of a Cumberland lars of the earth with one blow, and burst dell is society, and many are exposed to a danger which permanently modifies the customs of the people. and ruined the framework of the hills. The Steinberg-cliff, a rocky wall of several millions of cubic fathoms with all the forest upon it, and the nagelfluh wall of the 'Gemeinde-Märcht' sinking like a terrace more than a hundred feet below, had given way. This was the signal for universal destruction, for then began a tragedy which can be compared to no other phenomenon for its fearful sublimity, in the wildest confusion blocks of rock and splinters of stone, mud and turf, foliage and trees, sometimes whirled up into the air, sometimes enveloped in clouds of dust, chased each over the mountain shoulders to the valley of Goldau. One huge fragment seemed to be trying to overtake another; it was a race of raw materials. The chaotic fall of the vast masses, the speed of their descent, the universal confusion, increased every moment. Mountain-blocks as big as houses with pines fixed to them, hurried, as if slung by a demon's fist, with free bounds like flying birds, high through the air. Other masses of rock ricocheted like shots from a giant cannonade striking from time to time only to bound up again into the air. Others were crushed by their companions on their path, and spluttered like whitehot iron rods shooting out sparks under the hammer. It was a scene from the Titans' battle of Greek mythology. "In a few minutes hundreds of dwellinghouses and as many stables and sheds were 800 THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. "In the Mayenthal on the St. Gothard, which is frequently threatened by avalanches, the neighbors collect in stormy winter weather in one of the largest houses, in order to watch and be able to set to work together, if a snowfall should come down and bury everything. In order, however, that time may not pass too slowly for the good people, they dance through the dangerous night to the sound of a fiddle or accordeons. This custom dulls a fear which the foreigner cannot think of without horror." The strong attachment of the people to a life like this is often quoted as a proof of the charm which mountains exercise over all who live within their shadow. M. Berlepsch says even the cattle of the valleys long and pine for the mountains, and a true child of the Alps, however prosperous abroad, always returns to his home. So, however, does a Lowland Scotchman, though his home should be on a plain as flat as Cambridgeshire. The love of home develops itself intensely in all limited communities, and in England deserters are constantly tracked through the certainty that they will hover around the spot whence they first emigrated. It is not, we suspect, the passion for mountains, but | erland, but has, we imagine, little necessary the thirst for a form of life which can be connection with any desire for mountains in realized nowhere else, that moves the moun- themselves. The effect of mountain scenery taineers. In the Himalayas, the peasantry perpetually present is only to dwarf the mind so far from loving their grand hills, hate by suggesting the impotence of human effort, them, as involving permanent and unneces- and mountaineers, as a rule, are comparasary toil, and it is almost impossible for the tively brainless. The Arians who left the hill chiefs to keep their few subjects from slopes of the Suleiman have throughout huindulging a thirst for the easier and sleepier man history supplied the dominant races of life of the plains. Climate undoubtedly is a mankind, but those who lingered, crushed strong attraction. Men, even in full health, by their mountains, remained an unprogreswho have once breathed a clear bracing air, sive race, and retain to this day nothing of are apt to feel a longing for it which amounts their ancestry except their superb physique to a disease, and which on the first attack and physical energy. It is, we suspect, to of sickness becomes absolutely irresistible. the visitor rather than to the native that AlThis seems to be specially the case in Switz- pine summits seem so majestically attractive. THE sale of Hugh Miller's works has been much larger in this country than in Great Britain. Messrs. Gould and Lincoln are the Boston publishers, and Messrs. Black, of Edinburgh, issue the works abroad. The "Testimony of the Rocks" has reached a sale of 27,000 copies in England and the same in America. Next comes the "Footprints of the Creator," in which the American sale has entirely outstripped the English, the former being upwards of 19,000, and the latter about 6,000. The "Old Red Sandstone" has sold 16,000 copies here to 9,000 in England; the "Schools and Schoolmasters," 16,000 here to 10,000 of the English; and the "First Impressions of England," 9,000 against 6,000 in Black's edition. The sale of the other volumes is about the same in both countries. On Monday a dental hospital for the poor was opened at 149 Great Portland Street. But one such institution as yet exists in London, and the only resources of this kind for the poor are nothing is more urgently wanted. At present the dispensaries, where, if driven to madness, they may have their " teeth carefully extracted," and their jaws, of course, rapidly emptied. By the exertion of Mr. Robinson and many other eminent dentists, this evil is partially remedied. The new institution is, however, in want of funds, which Messrs. Hoares, of 37 Fleet Street, are empowered to receive. Those who have experienced the pain which makes the heart even weakly thankful for a dentist's cruel mercies, will not hear this in vain.-Spectator. THE Americans are honored in Germany by Herr Venedey's life study of George Washington, whose high character is sublimated into an abstract ideal of human virtue with the true German intensity. THE literary executors of the late Lady Morgan have arranged, conformably with the wishes of the deceased lady, that Miss Jewsbury shall prepare her letters and journals for the press. About a volume of Autobiography exists in the composition of Lady Morgan, ready for the printer. There are also journals and note-books copiously kept, for many years subsequent to the period at which the regular composition breaks off. The letters are extremely numerous, and comprise a cycle of secret history. Among Lady Morgan's most intimate friends were Lady Caroline Lamb and Madame Patter-"Here do lye our dear boy, son-Bonaparte, and the correspondence of these celebrated beauties is said to be in the highest degree piquant and attractive. A NEW part has been published of the Sanscrit Dictionary by O. Böhtlingk and Rudolph Roth, published with that singular energy for the cultivation of languages which is characteristic of the Russians, by the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences. UNGRAMMATICAL EPITAPH IN BANBURY Whom God hath tain from we; And we do hope that us shall go to he, For he can never come back again to we." From Once a Week. LORD BROUGHAM in his notes on Paley, observes that it is more than probable that the longest dream occupies in reality but an instant of time. However the events in it may seem to be prolonged, the entire dream is dreamt from beginning to end during the momentary act of waking. Sometimes the subject matter of a dream from its commencement will be found to have direct reference to the act that wakes the dreamer, and unless it be that in such cases the sleeper has the power of foreseeing the cause that will awake him, and of placing before his imagination a series of visionary scenes all conducing to the final event, it would follow that the theory propounded by our great philosopher must be the only tenable one. Of the class of dreams here referred to, the following is a remarkable one as illustrating the hypothesis in question. tired to my cell. On the next day two clergymen were announced as coming with the intent of bringing me to a just sense of the enormity of my guilt. On entering they proved to be the only two members of the Episcopal bench that I had painted in actual life-the Bishop of and the Archbishop of- The latter personage was quiet and dignified, but quite equal to the occasion. The Bishop of was more demonstrative, in fact, he brought me the first consolation I had had since my arrest: "You are to be hanged, my dear friend. True, it is not a pleasant situation to find one's self in, though in some respects a prominent and, let us add, an elevated one; but it is nothing, nothing in the least; you'll he cut down; all that you have to attend to is to see that you fall easily-that you have something soft to fall upon when the moment comes." The two right reverend gentlemen were most assiduous in their attentions to me, in fact, they never left me during the entire I was one of a party on a yachting excur-period of the two days that elapsed between sion. The vessel being a small one, the my trial and execution. I was allowed the sleeping accommodation was of the scantiest best of fare, and the cook at Newgate was -my bed and bedroom being a hammock, an excellent one: in the matter of Beccafislung in the usual manner, from the top of cos he was above criticism; his Ortolans the small triangular cabin, formed by the stuffed with truffles were unapproachable extreme bows of the vessel, the entire apart--in fact, it was the very dinner that I had ment being only large enough to contain once partaken of at the table of Mr. S. C., me, my hammock, and a number of hams and dried sausages, dangling like myself from the roof. I was asleep, and dreaming; I had painted a portrait of some one, and had failed to produce a likeness, for which crime I was arraigned before a criminal court on a charge of felony. So far my dream was retrospective-it began in the present tense on my finding myself waiting in the dock for the verdict, which was either to liberate me, or to consign me to an ignominious death on the scaffold. The intelligent jury before whom I was tried, consisted entirely of my relatives and most intimate friends. I was prepared for their verdict, which was - Guilty, with the strongest recommendation that the utmost severity of the law should be visited upon me. The Judge put on his black cap, and sentenced me in the usual expressive phrases, without holding out the least hope of mercy. I left the dock with the officer, and after transacting business with a deputation of photographic artists from the illustrated newspapers, re con the great English gourmand, resident in The day-the hour-the moment came, and squeezing my hand, the excellent bishop assured me for the last time that "it was nothing, I should be cut down." I as |