misery of a January morning, after the Christmas holidaysawoke out of some smiling dream of home by the ubiquitous usher of the establishment, to a hasty ablution in frozen water, and a toilette by rushlight-hurried down, long ere chanticleer had crowed, to a cheerless school-room, where, ranged in class round a miserable stove, we were wont to calculate problems of the "rule of three," ingeniously framed by cunning men to puzzle the youthful generation, with our minds more on the warm pillow we had just quitted, than on our task, with our hands resting on the slate-and oh! the coldness of that slate, meet accompaniment to the figures;-all these combined, I used to regard as the ne plus ultra of frigidity; but they were nothing to the waters of the Arve. It needed no Reaumer, or Fahrenheit, to discover that their temperature was but little below freezing point; our limbs were like to have been paralysed, and our blood congealed, had we not yielded to the entreaties to come out, of our elder companion.

Far from doing us an injury, the bath did us a world of good; it not only strengthened and refreshed our limbs, but animated our spirits, and the heavy knapsack seemed four pounds lighter when we again resumed it, and marched cheerily along the road.

When we had been in motion for about an hour, we came in sight of the village of Chède, where we met a barefooted lad, who offered to conduct us to the cascade of the same name. We followed him up a by-road to the left, then up a rugged declivity into a small wood, in the centre of which we came suddenly upon the cascade. By starting so early in the morning, we were fortunate enough to have the sun so far east, as to see its rays reflected on the falls in the form of a rainbow, which considerably heightened the beauty of the scene. In front there was a sloping bank, so soft and verdant, as to invite a few minutes' repose; behind it the wood stretched out, and before us, an enormous rock, over which the mountain siream dashed with deafening roar, forming the beautiful cascade of Chède. It was a spot fit for meditation. In its retired scenes, man's thoughts could roam without fear of interruption, surrounded by nature's grandest works, and attuned to depth and charity by the roar of the sweeping waters. It was a spot peculiar to itself; in position and objects to be met with nowhere else. This gave me the reluctance to quit it; but on we must. Caspar, eager for more stupendous works, starts up and cries, in the attitude of the general in Xenophon,

"And now for Chamounix!"

The road, as we advanced, increased in beauty, and became more varied in its scenes. It took us a good hour to traverse

spirit of the journey, that those hopes would brook no delay, while we felt sure, from the unexpected beauty of the fruit, that we should not suffer disappointment in its taste. It was not yet five when we shouldered our knapsacks, and, with a hunch of rye bread in the spacious pocket of our blouses, quitted the threshold of the Hôtel du Mont Blanc.

But I must record an exploit of the young Etonian and myself; to wit, a bath in the river Arve. I call it an exploit because, from what fell from the peasants who witnessed us, I understand that neither they, nor any other traveller, have submerged themselves willingly in the waters of that stream so near its source. Now I make it a point to bathe wherever the element is to be found, and although in a form so little attractive as the Arve, at Saint Martin, I determined to attempt that mode of ablution. When I signified my intention to the landlord, and the peasants about the village, and questioned them regarding the depth and best localities of the river, they stared at me in the greatest amazement, and, except opening their mouths with wonder, they delivered no answer to my question, till I had several times repeated it. They then tried to dissuade me from my purpose, saying that the Arve was not fit to bathe in; that its waters were as cold as ice, and might paralyse my limbs; that its depth was unknown, because unfathomed. To the last argument alone did I attach any importance. I knew that the Arve, however broad and rushing, was very shallow in all parts, but there might be holes and under-currents which would change my pleasure into foolhardiness, were I to plunge indiscriminately into it. I therefore chose a small branch of about fifty yards long, which it cuts into the shore, and there terminates, for my experiment. I proposed that my companions should join me the Indian said that at all times he preferred a warm bath, and that especially in the present, he would not go to extremes by taking one of ice; that a fit of insanity must have come over me. The Etonian laughed at his brother's fears, applauded my resolution, and declared that he should join me in the bath. Accordingly, attired in our caleçons, and surrounded by some dozen "natives," among whom were the two German waiters of the hotel, Caspar and I plunged into the branch of the stream which I have described. But oh! ye frosts and snows, how cold it was! While I was plunging frantically about, like a Red Indian executing his war-dance, to get myself seasoned to the element, I called to mind all the situations in life where I had experienced extreme cold, to bear comparison with the present; but in vain. I remembered that, when a young urchin at school, I used to think that Siberia must have been an oven, and Polar bears bakers, compared with the intense

misery of a January morning, after the Christmas holidaysawoke out of some smiling dream of home by the ubiquitous usher of the establishment, to a hasty ablution in frozen water, and a toilette by rushlight-hurried down, long ere chanticleer had crowed, to a cheerless school-room, where, ranged in class round a miserable stove, we were wont to calculate problems of the "rule of three," ingeniously framed by cunning men to puzzle the youthful generation, with our minds more on the warm pillow we had just quitted, than on our task, with our hands resting on the slate-and oh! the coldness of that slate, meet accompaniment to the figures;-all these combined, I used to regard as the ne plus ultra of frigidity; but they were nothing to the waters of the Arve. It needed no Reaumer, or Fahrenheit, to discover that their temperature was but little below freezing point; our limbs were like to have been paralysed, and our blood congealed, had we not yielded to the entreaties to come out, of our elder companion.

Far from doing us an injury, the bath did us a world of good; it not only strengthened and refreshed our limbs, but animated our spirits, and the heavy knapsack seemed four pounds lighter when we again resumed it, and marched cheerily along the road.

When we had been in motion for about an hour, we came in sight of the village of Chède, where we met a barefooted lad, who offered to conduct us to the cascade of the same name. We followed him up a by-road to the left, then up a rugged declivity into a small wood, in the centre of which we came suddenly upon the cascade. By starting so early in the morning, we were fortunate enough to have the sun so far east, as to see its rays reflected on the falls in the form of a rainbow, which considerably heightened the beauty of the scene. In front there was a sloping bank, so soft and verdant, as to invite a few minutes' repose; behind it the wood stretched out, and before us, an enormous rock, over which the mountain stream dashed with deafening roar, forming the beautiful cascade of Chède. It was a spot fit for meditation. In its retired scenes, man's thoughts could roam without fear of interruption, surrounded by nature's grandest works, and attuned to depth and charity by the roar of the sweeping waters. It was a spot peculiar to itself; in position and objects to be met with nowhere else. This gave me the reluctance to quit it; but on we must. Caspar, eager for more stupendous works, starts up and cries, in the attitude of the general in Xenophon,

"And now for Chamounix!"

The road, as we advanced, increased in beauty, and became more varied in its scenes. It took us a good hour to traverse

the wood; now halting to admire a glimpse of the Alps, when the position of the trees allowed it; now lingering by some mountain torrent, watching its leaps down the declivity; now standing on the edge of the once lake of Chède, but which a detached portion of the heights above filled up some years ago; and now, shouting in all the strangest whoops imaginable, to raise the echoes, and count the number of their falls. But when we did at length top the hill, and emerge from the wood, what a scene presented itself! Mont Blanc stretched out in its full immensity before us, with all the needles and some of the glaciers glittering in the sunshine. We met here the first traveller; he was seated on a bank of grass, and endeavouring to sketch with his pencil the scene which so utterly beggars description with the pen.

"Happy man!" cried I, inwardly, "to have the gift of preserving on canvass nature's wonders, and refreshing the eye with them in other scenes, when the mind wanders back in recollection."

The road to Servoz was all descent, but so broken by the storms of winter, and so covered with stones, that our shins would have been in peril had we attempted a more rapid pace. The tourists began now to increase; we met none on foot like ourselves, but several in char-à-bancs-large carriages would be knocked to pieces in this road. At length, about eleven o'clock, we reached Servoz, and sped forthwith to the nearest hotel, where we breakfasted with all the appetite which a walk of a dozen miles in the early morning is apt to give one. The wine,

it is true, was sour, and the coffee was none of the best, being grossly flavoured with chicorée; but the eggs, rolls, fresh cream, and honey, from Chamounix, were undeniable. We stretched our limbs for a while after our meal; the Indian conning a missal, with the translation in the Savoyard patois; Caspar paying a visit to the curiosity shop at the entrance of the hotel, whence he returned laden with specimens of quartz, petrified lizards, and real granite from Mont Blanc, with some francs less in his pockets; while I amused myself with the feuilleton of the "Courrier des Alpes," and became irresistibly drawn into Dumas' latest production, which was therein pirated from the Paris "Constitutionel."

There were a good many travellers about Servoz; some setting out for an excursion to the Buet; some waiting for return horses to take them on to Chamounix; some, like ourselves, resting in the inn, and recruiting mind and body with the entertainment it offered. Among the latter, I noticed a short, stout man, dressed in loose trowsers, a bright green swallow-tailed coat, and collars la Byron, which gave free space

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for a pair of extensive, bushy whiskers to grow. His countenance, like the rest of his body, betokened little care and goodliving, while a ruddy, cheerful glow intimated that he had enjoyed neither in excess, and that he was of opinion that there was yet much good, sound, rational enjoyment to be found along with the evil in this world. He was alone, and had finished breakfast when we entered. He sat at a table on our left, near the window, and scribbled over two or three sheets of paper while we were dispatching the eggs and coffee. He then sealed the letters with a ponderous bunch which hung at his girdle, and calling in the magd (it was thus he styled the pretty damsel that served us), he delivered them, with the air of a stage king to his bearer of dispatches, into her hands. He charged her by a tausend teufel to see them well taken care of, and put into the post-office, accompanying the oath with a chuck under the girl's chin. But he looked so good and innocent the while, and, like Chaucer's squire, "as modest as a maid," that the girl laughed merrily, which set us all three a-laughing, till the Indian grew black as the hole at Calcutta, and I had well nigh choked over a hard-boiled egg.

"Ha! ba!" roared the Dutchman, joining in our laugh. "Ho! ho!" echoed the Indian.

"A good joke, by George!" cried Caspar. And we all laughed and made remarks to one another; so that in half an hour, we were as intimate with the Dutchman as if we had known him the whole of our lives, and he had given us the rise of his family till they became the first brewers on the Scheldt, and had informed us how that one of the epistles he had just dispatched was for his dear engel, his frau Gretcher.

"The good soul will receive it this day week-washing-day; it will cheer her up to learn that I am well and happy, so far away from home; and I have enclosed little letters for the two boys. Ah! by St. Maurice, but they are rare little imps!"

The communicative and lively Hollander then laid his route before us, and explained to us how that, by dint of much coaxing, he had got leave of absence from his dear Gretchen, for the space of six weeks. Sweet angel! her indulgence was as wide as her heart.

"You make the tour of Switzerland, then?" inquired I.

"Of part; I shall not go east beyond Martigny; there I intend to strike off north, to Villeneuve and the lake of Geneva; thence by Berne and the Black Forest home."

"And when do you set out?"

"This instant."

"Towards which of the four winds?" "Towards the south."