In church you are alone, in the sense of be- when they went to a church where their ating isolated from all companions, or from tention was kept on the stretch all the time the possibility of holding communication the sermon lasted, whether they would or with anybody and the wearisome sermon, no. They felt that this intrusive interest if utterly useless otherwise, is useful in giv- about the discourse, compelling them to ating a man time to think, in circumstances tend, was of the nature of an assault, and of which will generally dispose him to think an unjustifiable infraction of the liberty of seriously. There is a restful feeling, too, for the subject. Their feeling was, "What which you are the better. It is a fine thing earthly right has that man to make us listen to feel that church is a place where, if even to his sermon, without getting our consent? for two hours only, you are quite free from We go to church to rest: and lo! he comworldly business and cares. You know that pels us to listen!" all these are waiting for you outside; but at I do not forget, musing in the shade this least you are free from their actual endur- beautiful summer day, that there may be ance here. I am persuaded, and I am happy cases in which leisure is very much to be to entertain the persuasion, that men are avoided. To some men, constant occupaoften much the better for being present dur- tion is a thing that stands between them and ing the preaching of sermons to which they utter wretchedness. You remember the poor pay very little attention. Only some such man, whose story is so touchingly told by belief as this could make one think, without Borrow in The Romany Rye, who lost his wife, much sorrow, of the thousands of discourses his children, all his friends, by a rapid sucwhich are preached every Sunday over Bri- cession of strokes; and who declared that tain, and of the class of ears and memories he would have gone mad if he had not resoto which they are given. You see that coun- lutely set himself to the study of the Chinese try congregation coming out of that ivy- language. Only constant labor of mind could covered church in that beautiful churchyard."keep the misery out of his head." And Look at their faces, the ploughman, the years afterwards, if he paused from toil for dairymaids, the drain-diggers, the stable- even a few hours, the misery returned. The boys: what could they do towards taking in poor fisherman in The Antiquary was wrong the gist of that well-reasoned, scholarly, ele- in his philosophy, when Mr. Oldbuck found gant piece of composition which has occupied him, with trembling hands, trying to repair the last half-hour? Why, they could not his battered boat the day after his son was understand a sentence of it. Yet it has done buried. "It's weel wi' you gentles," he them good. The general effect is wholesome. said, "that can sit in the house wi' handkerThey have got a little push, they have felt chers at your een, when ye lose a freend; themselves floating on a gentle current, go- but the like o' us maun to our wark again, ing in the right direction. Only enthusiastic if our hearts were beating as hard as my young divines expect the mass of their con- hammer!" We love the kindly sympathy gregation to do all they exhort them to do. that made Sir Walter write the words: but You must advise a man to do a thing a hun- bitter as may be the effort with which the dred times, probably, before you can get him poor man takes to his heartless task again, to do it once. You know that a breeze, surely, he will all the sooner get over his blowing at thirty-five miles an hour, does sorrow. And it is with gentles, who can very well if it carries a large ship along in "sit in the house" as long as they like, that its own direction at the rate of eight. And the great grief longest lingers. There is a even so, the practice of your hearers, though wonderful efficacy in enforced work to tide truly influenced by what you say to them, one over every sort of trial. I saw not lags tremendously behind the rate of your long since a number of pictures, admirably preaching. Be content, my friend, if you sketched, which had been sent to his family can maintain a movement, sure though slow, in England by an emigrant son in Canada, in the right way. And don't get angry with and which represented scenes in daily life your rural flock on Sundays, if you often see there among the remote settlers. And I on their blank faces, while you are preach- was very much struck with the sad expresing, the evidence that they are not taking in sion which the faces of the emigrants always a word you say. And don't be entirely dis- wore, whenever they were represented in recouraged. You may be doing them good pose or inaction. I felt sure that those penfor all that. And if you do good at all, you sive faces set forth a sorrowful fact. Lying know better than to grumble, though you on a great bluff, looking down upon a lovely may not be doing it in the fashion that you river; or seated at the tent-door on a Sunwould like best. I have known men, accus-day, when his task was laid apart; however tomed to sit quiet, pensive, half attentive, the backwoodsman was depicted, if not in under the sermons of an easy-going but or- energetic action, there was always a very thodox preacher, who felt quite indignant sad look upon the rough face. And it was

From The Athenæum. it is new. "The Eagle's Nest" in the Valley of Sixt; a Summer Home among the Alps: together with some Excursions among the Great Glaciers. By Alfred Wills. Longman & Co.

THIS is another of those Alpine books, the publication of which is rapidly forming a peculiar group in the literature of travel:a book, moreover, not without its peculiarity. Mr. Wills claims to be, in some sort, a discoverer of the Valley of Sixt,-the beauties of which have, apparently, been too generally overlooked. So much have they struck him as to have tempted him to purchase and proprietorship. He is about building a house there, the district-far off as it seems to fancy-being virtually as accessible as the north of Scotland was some twenty years ago. In all his enjoyments and projects he was encouraged, and assisted by his wife, who, indeed, is answerable for some of the pages and the illustrations of this volume. Mrs. Wills died a few months ago, painfully and unexpectedly. The book is dedicated to her memory. Grief takes many forms of solace. To some, such immediate and intimate revelations and recollections as we find in the Preface will appear more sudden and explicit than is agreeable. They must give the book, to all, a tinge which distinguishes it from the generality of narratives for the use of summer tourists.

"Memoirs of the Guides" would not be a bad subject for some member of the Alpine Club, especially if he can write so well as Mr. Wills. It will be seen that our author is answerable for this suggestion in the pages from which we draw the following sad story:

"The glaciers of the Mont Rouan are interesting to those who care about the great names in Alpine story, as the scene of the tragedy which closed the career of the adventurous Jacques Balmat, the hero of Mont Blanc, perhaps the hardiest and most indomitable mountaineer that ever drew breath, even beneath the shadow of the Alps. He had, unfortunately for himself, contracted a habit of gold-seeking, which kept him poor all his life; and he had long had an idea that in some veins, apparently of carboniferous earth, which streak the calcareous precipices near the glaciers of Mont Rouan, gold-ore might be found. In the month of September, 1834, being then no less than seventy-two years of age, he started, accompanied by a single chasseur of Val Orsine,-one Pache by name,-on his perilous tour of discovery. He was seen the following day, in company with the huntsman, making his way towards the head of the Fond de la Combe. Late in the afternoon they reached a solitary hut, called La Cabane des Bergers de Moutons, perched on one of the largest of the patches of grass already mentioned, and here they passed the night. The next day the hunter returned alone, and Jacques Balmat was never seen again. His companion betrayed great reluctance to answer any questions concerning him; and, when pressed, always asserted that When noticing "Peaks and Passes" (on they had separated in the morning, Jacques Balits publication) it was impossible to avoid mat making his way towards the glaciers, he pointing out how large a share in the delight returning in the other direction, as the old man of these Alpine adventures is taken by mere insisted upon going into places of such danger desire to dare perilous feats which no one that he dared not follow him. Of what befell before has accomplished. Separating with Balmat after they parted, he declared he knew honor from among amateur climbers and nothing. The Val Orsine man stuck to his story whenever interrogated, and unsatisfactory as his scramblers, experienced men of science whose manner was always felt to be, nothing could be investigations cannot be too minute, too thor- discovered to contradict his account; and there oughly supported by collection,-we cannot the matter rested till fresh light was thrown but feel that there is a large leaven of reck- upon it by an incident which illustrates curiously lessness for the sake of recklessness, mixed the state of society at Sixt, and the nature of the up with much enjoyment of nature and of objects of primary importance in the eyes of the scenery. This especially applies to the glacier village politician. Years after this occurrence, excursions, many of which cannot be at- a disclosure was made by a man who, at the time tempted without grave peril to life, the bod-Jacques Balmat disappeared, had been Syndic ily fatigue of which is tremendous, and the title as the chief person of the commune at the of the commune, an officer bearing the same pleasure dependent on the inscrutable ca- present day, but then deriving his authority from prices of Alpine weather. All these things the fact of his being the nominee and representtell characteristically enough on the guide-ative of the central administration, not, as now, class, by whose intervention such terrible from being the free choice of popular election. pleasures are only to be enjoyed. Some- This person now divulged for the first time, that thing akin to the fascination of chamois-the day after Jacques Balmat was last seen, a hunting naturally grows into the nature of the mountaineer. He has not only to carry out old and well-approved plans of travel, but is encouraged to dare and to devise in order to satisfy the appetite of explorers to whom a pleasure is sweet in proportion as

peasant of his commune had informed him, that playing on the grassy slopes on the northern on the previous day his two children had been side of the Fond de la Combe, near the Chalets de Boret, when they beheld a man, who had been apparently creeping along the naked face of the rocks opposite, above a great accumulation of

asked if Pache had seen Carrier. The hunter insisted on their taking a bottle of wine, to which they assented, on condition that he should come to Val Orsine and dine with them. Accordingly the three adjourned to the inn at Val Orsine, where they sat down to dinner, and Balmat and Carrier took care to ply the old hunter freely with wine. When it had begun to tell upon him a little, and the suspicious reserve he always maintained in the presence of those whom he associated with Jacques Balmat had a little worn away, Carrier, who was sitting beside him, suddenly pulled out the sketch he had taken at the Fond de la Combe, and laid it before him saying, 'Connaissez-vous cette image?' - The hunter, taken off his guard, started back, exclaiming, Mon Dieu! voilà où Jacques Balmat est péri!'- What, then,' said Carrier; you know where he perished?' The man appeared confused for a moment, and then recovering his habitual caution, said, 'No, no, I know nothing about it; but I saw the scene near which I left him, and it struck me as a kind of place he might have fallen down.' He then got up, and no entreaties could prevail upon him to stay; and by no artifice could he be induced to approach the subject again. It is not difficult to

broken blocks of ice, which had been pushed over a precipice by the advance of the glacier, suddenly fall and disappear in a chasm between the rock and the ice. Influenced by motives which the reader would scarcely guess, and which it would appear were shared by his informant, the Syndic strictly charged the children never to breathe a syllable of what they had seen, and threatened them with all the undefined terrors of the law if they ever ventured to tell the story to any one else. The children were young, and probably living at a solitary chalet, where they had no one but their parents to talk to, and either forgot or only faintly remembered the incident, or were imbued with a salutary respect for so great a personage as the Syndic, and the secret had been kept to that hour. The ex-Syndic was well aware that the relatives of Balmat had made anxious but fruitless searches for his remains, and that some sort of suspicion of want of candor had fallen upon the Val Orsine hunter, and, whether his conscience at last smote him, that he had suffered him to remain so long under a cloud, or for what other reason does not appear, but he now for the first time told this story to the then Vice-Syndic of Sixt. The ViceSyndic communicated the intelligence, first to Jean Payot of Chamouni, and afterwards re-understand that an ignorant peasant, fearful of peated it in the presence of my informant, Au- being charged with having had a hand in the guste Balmat. The children in question were death of Jacques Balmat, should have imagined inquired for, but it seemed they had left the that his safety lay in pretending absolute ignoneighborhood. The spot, however, from which rance of every circumstance connected with his the figure had been seen to fall, a little green fate; but the conduct of the Syndic, to whom oasis in the desert of rock, was pointed out; and the whole mystery was known, requires to be a fresh expedition was organized, on an exten- explained a little more in detail. It is not easy sive scale, from Chamouni. Among the explor- for a person unfamiliar with the Alps to coners were Auguste Balmat and several other rel-ceive the importance justly attached by the mematives of the deceased, and one Michel Carrier, the artist of the great plan in relief of Mont Blanc known to visitors at Chamouni, and a tolerable draughtsman. With incredible difficulty, and taking the utmost precautions against accident, they succeeded in reaching the green knoll near and at the side of the glacier. Here they found below them a precipice, and at the foot of this the broken masses of ice shot over the edge of the platform on which the glacier rests. Auguste was tied to a rope, but found it impossible to descend the face of the rock, or to get any nearer to the chasm which had received his great-uncle. He described it as a black gulf, the bottom of which he could not see, into which a stream issuing from the glacier was thunder-cover the comparatively level ground which ing, and stones and blocks of ice, broken off as the glacier poured over the ridge, were continually falling. All hope was therefore finally abandoned of the possibility of finding any traces of the great pioneer of Mont Blanc. Carrier, however, took a sketch of the spot, and the party returned to Chamouni. Sometime afterwards he and Auguste Balmat went together to the Val Orsine. When they drew near to the hunter's cottage, Carrier went on alone to the door, and asked Pache if he had seen Balmat, adding, I expected him somewhere about here; he is gone to seek minerals.' The man answered that he had not seen Auguste, but invited Carrier to sit down and wait for him. Half an hour afterwards Balmat came by, as if casually, and

bers of a mountain community to their forests. Not only do they depend upon them, and upon nothing else, for their supplies of fuel and for their building materials, but also for the still more important service of at once breaking up into detached portions the accumulation of the winter snow which falls upon the area they cover, and of forming a protecting barrier against the avalanches hurled from the heights above them. These avalanches bring with them not merely snow, but rocks, stones, and debris, and sweeping over the unprotected mountain sides in prodigious volumes and with incredible velocity, not unfrequently tear off large portions of mould, and kneading it up with their own substance,

finally arrests their progress, with a compound of earth and snow. When spring comes round and the snow melts into water, the land is covered with a thick deposit of mud, through which it will perhaps take two or three seasons for the herbage beneath to force its way; so that even if houses, men, and cattle be out of the reach of the avalanche, it may do damage enough to impoverish a whole neighborhood. Any thing, therefore, which tends to the destruction of their forest ramparts, is regarded by the peasantry as a deplorable calamity.... Jacques Balmat was a noted gold-seeker, and despite his ill-success, enjoyed considerable reputation throughout the communes near to Chamouni as a person of great knowledge and experience on such sub

jects. The moment the Syndic heard that the borders. The priest and his "following" children had seen a man fall down the precipice set their faces resolutely against Mr. and of Mont Rouan, he conjectured that Jacques Mrs. Wills, and the proprietor had to pay Balmat, who had been seen in the valley a day very dearly for his few acres, something or two before, had been searching for gold in like double the market-price. The expenses that neighborhood, and that it was he who had met with the terrible fate described by the children. A vague local tradition had long been current, which asserted that gold was to be found in the valley, and that some Swiss adventurers had even made their fortunes by working it; but little heed was paid to the story, and no one had assigned to the popular notion any particular locality. If Jacques Balmat were once known to have selected a definite spot for his researches, his example would be followed; and the discovery which had been frustrated by his tragical death would be accomplished by others, Mines would be opened, vast quantities of wood would be needed to smelt the ore, the interests of the valley would be sacrificed to the influence of persons who could gain the ear of the authorities at Turin, and their forests would be destroyed to feed the cupidity of strange adventurers. Such was the train of thought which passed through the mind of the wary Syndic, and determined him, at all hazards, to suppress every trace of facts which might put future gold-hunters on the right scent.'

To other Englishmen who are tempted to try cottages of their own among the Alps, as summer retreats, the narrative offered by Mr. Wills of his difficulties in settlement will be helpful and instructive. It was long, he tells us, ere he could get his title; any thing like purchase being seriously and systematically opposed by a large body among the valley-people in Sixt. The church did not like the idea of an heretical Englishman building a miniature Exeter Hall within its

of conveyance, however, rendered heavy by delay, opposition, remonstrance, memorial, must seem fabulously small to any one aware of the brilliant rapidity with which England's Circumlocution Offices, official or professional, run up their bills for weary words, on skins of parchment,-for consultations, the argument of which is to impede agreement. Yet more: when the Englishman, with true British perseverance, did carry his point, had paid for his acres, and began to lay the foundations of his mistrusted heretical summer-retreat,-nothing, he assures us, could be more cordially neighborly and less selfish than the behavior of every one in the valley, even of those who had been the most stanch of his opponents. The site itself seems full of beauty, the scenery to be as grand and bold as Alpine scenery should be;

but to possess some amenities of its own, as in the fir forests, where the trees spring, Mr. Wills assures us, not from that fine, bare, soil which is habitually the groundwork of the pine, but from a tender carpet of green turf. Last winter the vale was ravaged by terrible floods, and the inhabitants entreated Mr. Wills to get up a subscription in relief of those who had suffered thereby. Wisely, he declined to do this; but has hurried the publication of this volume, he says, with the idea of turning some English gold into the direction of the sufferers from the inundation.

THE DEATH OF MARLBOROUGH.-In 1716 | last. While at Bath he would walk home from the Duke of Marlborough was attacked by palsy, the rooms to his lodgings to save sixpence; and partly in consequence of the death of his favor- left a million and a half to his descendants to ite daughter, Anne, Countess of Sunderland, squander. When gazing at a portrait of him"the little Whig." His mind never recovered self, the great general is said to have exclaimed, its tone, and his nerves were far more shattered"That was a man!" He lingered six years after by the duchess' temper than by his battles or the turmoil of politics. One day when Dr Garth, who was attending him, was going away, the duchess followed him down-stairs and swore at him for some offence. Vainly did the duke try the Bath waters. He recovered partially, and his memory was spared. It was, therefore, wrong to couple him, as he has been in the following lines, with Swift, who became a violent lunatic, and died in moody despondency :

"From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage
flow,

And Swift expires, a driveller and a show."
Marlborough was active and calculating to the

his first attack, still, to the last, attending the debates in the Lords, and settling his money matters himself. He had one difficulty, too much money, and once wrote to a friend to help him, "I have now," he said, "one hundred thousand pounds dead, and shall have fifty more next week; if you can employ it in any way, it will be a very great favor to me."

As he was expiring, the duchess asked him whether he had heard the prayers which had been read to him.

"Yes, and I joined in them," were the last words which the great Marlborough uttered. He sank to rest with her whom, with all her faults, he had loved more than all, by his side.-The Queens of Society.