hues of autumn,

into glaciers, forming glorious rainbow-arches of rivers, which one afterwards beholds bounding like youth exultingly along happier plains, and “rejoicing to run their course.' The harshness of winter, - the softness of summer, -the glowing all are manifested here! One looks down, with an expanding heart, on a very paradise of a hundred leagues of plains covered with spire-crowned villages, and with joyous vintages: one turns round, - chilled and shuddering, to twenty thousand feet of ice, which form their line of horizon.

I left the beaten track, and struck up immediately against the side of the mountains, in a part where I think few or none might have been before me. I clambered incessantly, for one hour, up a ridge nearly inaccessible, I should think, to any, excepting to him whose head turns not on the edge of precipices. I threw myself, at last, on a sort of platform, under a lofty peak, which I know not by name; but, what a moment to me was that when I saw what my vision had gained by the ascent! I was there, among the ruins of nature, or rather, I seemed to look upon the world ere the Almighty had called it into order. I stood 'above all around me was a broken sea of mountains; and the clouds were breaking around their highest tops. The glorious sun was above; and the voices of the thousand torrents were heard below, breaking the almighty silence! What a thrill of exultation, of joy, of wonder, of love, and of gratitude, ran through me! I looked along it all, with a sidelong glance, and half reclining myself, you know not the pleasure of this; but Coleridge knew it well, and he has described it,-thought I really was looking on another world. I felt alone as the Arab in his desert, on a spot perhaps untrodden by the foot of man.

I sprang up, and caught firm hold of one solitary pine, which overhung a dizzy precipice. One arm of it was hanging broken, over a depth which I would not have hung over for all beneath the sun; and yet, there was a butterfly sporting! I trusted to the trunk of the tree, and I swung myself forward.

I saw mountains behind, around, and beneath me: fronting me, across the abyss, where lay the Vale of Chamounix, rose the range of the Breven, and a host of mountains; close at my right, across the Mer de Glace, were the red pinnacles of the Dru; and behind me, the Blanc in his clouds. A sea of clouds also, beneath me, was silently opening, and discios

ing lovely spots of landscape, and then softly veiling them over, as the breeze fitfully entered into the veil of silvery mist, and shook its dewy folds. Then suddenly, and as it were, in the midst of the sky, a bold craggy peak, like a spear, would reveal itself, apparently based on nothing, and then become filmy and dim, and vanish away: all was motion; - all was life; - all was progression; which is life - even here. The winds were abroad; and the birds of prey flew screaming past me; the waters were calling to each other; and flowers were bursting into life. Over this face of chaos, Life and Death were met,-production and devastation, - beauty and decay! All the energies and powers of nature were here in their first strength; all warring on each other, and living on devastation; the life of each was the other's death; and that death, or change, was the cause of renewed and beautified existence! And here I stood above it all: my only visible companions were the Col du Geant and Mont Blanc; and nothing to interrupt the feeling which was opened between me and the pervading Infinite!

EXERCISE XXXVII.

MORNING HYMN TO MONT BLANC.

Coleridge.

[The following piece opens with the tones of sublimity and awe, slightly aspirated "pectoral quality," "low notes," and "very slow movement." The tone of tranquillity and admiration, succeeds, at "Yet like some sweet beguiling melody." At "Awake my soul," &c. the "expression" changes to increasing loudness and energy. At "Thou first and chief," &c. the tone of awe returns: at " Wake oh! wake," &c. the full tones of majesty and grandeur, are resumed. In the invocations which follow, the style of utterance varies with the feelings naturally connected with each class of objects in the apostrophes. The close of the piece is in the "sustained” style of a prolonged but solemn shout.]

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! around thee and above

Deep is the air and dark, substantial black,-
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount!

I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing, — there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest!-not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs all join my hymn!

Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
Oh! struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink:
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, oh! wake, and utter praise.
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye
five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever?

Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,

Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded, — and the silence came, "Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?"

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain,
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast, Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me, -rise, oh! ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!

EXERCISE XXXVIII.

CONTEMPLATION OF THE STARRY HEAVENS.

Young.

[Sublimity, solemnity, and awe, are the predominating emotions in the following passage: these require the slightly "aspirated” “pectoral quality" of voice, "very low pitch," "suppressed force," and extremely "slow movement," with correspondent pauses of unusual length.]

STARS teach, as well as shine.

This prospect vast, what is it? - Weighed aright, 'Tis Nature's system of divinity,

And every student of the night inspires:

'Tis elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand.
Why from yon arch, - that infinite of space,
With infinite of lucid orbs replete,

Which set the living firmament on fire,
At the first glance, in such an overwhelm
Of wonderful, on man's astonished sight
Rushes Omnipotence? To curb our pride,
Our reason rouse, and lead it to that Power
Whose love lets down these silver chains of light,
To draw up man's ambition to Himself,

And bind our chaste affections to His throne.

And see! Day's amiable sister sends

Her invitation, in the softest rays

Of mitigated lustre ;

courts thy sight,

Which suffers from her tyrant brother's blaze.
Night grants thee the full freedom of the skies,
Nor rudely reprimands thy lifted eye:

With gain and joy, she bribes thee to be wise.
Night opes the noblest scenes, and sheds an awe
Which gives those venerable scenes full weight,
And deep reception in the entendered heart.

This theatre! - what eye can take it in?
By what divine enchantment was it raised,
For minds of the first magnitude to launch
In endless speculation, and adore?

One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine,
And light us deep into the Deity;
How boundless in magnificence and might!
Oh! what a confluence of ethereal fires,