"He who would do some great thing in this short life," says Foster, speaking of the fire of Howard's benevolence, "must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." This delay in boiling is undoubtedly a great element in decision of character, as it is in tenacity and perseverance. While some men are boiling impetuously, others, at a much higher point, with far greater intensity of heat, keep quiet, manifest no turbulence whatever; but, when the proper time comes, then they act, with a power and constancy all the more effectual for their previous calmness. So it is with religious feeling: that which is deepest makes the least noise, but its principle and action is steadfast and intense. Stillest streams oft water fairest meadows; and the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing.

I believe it is some years since any persons have been lost in passing the mountain, though Brockedon says that some additions to the sepulchre are annually made. In December 1825, three domestics of the convent, together with an unfortunate traveller, of whom they had gone in search with their dogs in a stormy time, were overwhelmed with an avalanche. Only one of the dogs escaped. These humane animals rejoice in their benevolent vocation as much as the monks do in theirs. They go out with the brethren in search of travellers, having some food or cordials slung around their necks; and, being able on their four feet to cross dangerous snow-sheets, where men could not venture, they trace out the unfortunate storm victims, and minister to their sufferings, if they find them alive, or come back to tell their masters where the dead are shrouded. These melancholy duties were formerly far more frequent.

The scene of greatest interest at the Hospice, a solemn, extraordinary interest indeed, is that of the Morgue, or building where the dead bodies of lost travellers are deposited. There they are, some of them as when the breath of life departed, and the Death Angel, with his instruments of frost and snow, stiffened and embalmed them for ages. The floor is thick with nameless skulls and bones and human dust heaped in confusion. But around the wall are groups of poor sufferers in the

very position in which they were found, as rigid as marble, and in this air, by the preserving element of an eternal frost, almost as uncrumbling. There is a mother and her child, a most affecting image of suffering and love. The face of the little one remains pressed to the mother's bosom, only the back part of the skull being visible, the body enfolded in her careful arms, careful in vain, affectionate in vain, to shield her offspring from the elemental wrath of the tempest. The snow fell fast and thick, and the hurricane wound them both up in one white shroud and buried them. There is also a tall, strong man standing alone, the face dried and black, but the white, unbroken teeth firmly set and closed, grinning from the fleshless jaws-it is a most awful spectacle. The face seems to look at you from the recesses of the sepulchre, as if it would tell you the story of a fearful death-struggle in the storm. There are other groups more indistinct, but these two are never to be forgotten, and the whole of these dried and frozen remnants of humanity are a terrific demonstration of the fearfulness of this mountain-pass, when the elements, let loose in fury, encounter the unhappy traveller. You look at all this through the grated window; there is just light enough to make it solemnly and distinctly visible, and to read in it a powerful record of mental and physical agony, and of maternal love in death. That little child, hiding its face in its mother's bosom, and both frozen to death;―ore can never forget the group, nor the memento mori, nor the token of deathless love.

CHAPTER XVI.

DESCENT INTO THE VAL D'AOSTE—ROMISH INTOLERANCE,

AND THAT OF STATE AND CHURCH.

We leave the Hospice with regret, but it is quite too cold to remain. The view on both sides, both the Italian and the Swiss side, is very grand, though you see nothing but countless ridges of mountains. The snowy Velan is an object of great magnificence. On the Italian side, we first circle the

little lake, the centre of which is the boundary line between Savoy and the Canton Vallais, within which the Hospice stands. Then a rapid winding descent speedily brings the traveller from the undisputed domain of ice and granite first to the mosses, then the scant grass, then the mountain shrubs, then the stunted larches, then the fir forests, and last the luxuriant vineyards and chestnut verdure of the Val d'Aoste. It were endless to enumerate the wild and beautiful windings of the route, the openings from it, the valleys of picturesque beauty which run off among the mountains, and the grandeur of the view of Mont Blanc, when you again encounter it. The first village from the Hospice is that of St. Remy, where the sentinel of the Bureau carefully examined the contents of my knapsack.

Taking up my crimson guide-book, he remarked that he supposed it was a book of prayer. I told him no, but showed him my pocket epistle to the Romans. John Murray's guidebook might very well on the continent be denominated the Englishman's prayer-book, for everybody has it in his hand, morning, noon, and night. What does Mr. Murray say? is the question that decides everything on the road. At the inns, when you come down to breakfast in the morning, besides a cup of coffee, an egg, and a roll, your traveller has his Murray at his plate, open at the day's route before him. If he is a genuine Irishman, you may expect him to take a bite at it, instead of his bread. And when, fatigued, you sit down at tea in the evening, there is John Murray again in his scarlet binding. The book looked very like a mass-book to the sentinel, and certainly, it being always the first thing that met his sight in every pocket, trunk, or knapsack, if he made the same mistake with every English traveller that crossed the mountain that summer that he did with me, he must have thought the English a wonderfully devout people.

But perhaps, if I had told him it was my prayer-book or Bible, he would have taken it away from me. For this was the very place where an English gentleman, whom I afterwards met at Geneva, travelling with his daughter, had their English Bible and prayer-book both taken from them, in obedience to

ROMISH INTOLERANCE IN SAVOY.

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an edict that had just been issued by the Sardinian police, in regard to all books on the frontier. He made a great storm about it, and would not give them up till he had compelled the officer to sign a receipt for them under his own name, telling him at the same time that he should report the affair to the English ambassador at Turin, when he would soon know if Englishmen were to be insulted in that way, The consequence was that after his return to Geneva he received his prayer-book and Bible safe and sound, restored by the authorities. The encyclical letter of the Pope had, that season, frightened the Sardinian government into unusual jealousy against the Scriptures. But if I had made a detour a little out of the village, I could have carried half a hundred weight of Bibles into Sardinia unmolested. Strange to say, my passport was not demanded, and it was only because, being on foot, the passport officer did not happen to be watching when. I passed.

In six hours from the Hospice you reach the lovely valley, where, beneath a southern sun and sky, are spread the vineyards and the Cité D'Aoste. Few scenes are more refreshingly beautiful than the rich chestnut and walnut foliage, which marks your proximity to the city; in a few hours you have gone from the extreme of coldness and sterility, amidst eternal ice and snow, to that of an almost tropical warmth and luxuriance of vegetation. It was Saturday evening about eight o'clock, when I reached the Hotel de la Vallée. The sunset was superb, and you could see at once the Grand St. Bernard and Mont Blanc filling their different quarters of the horizon, and throwing back from their crimsoned snowy summits the last rays of light. My hôtel I found most excellent, mine host a Swiss and a Protestant, he and his family forming the only four Protestant individuals in all the city.

Next after Rome, it is in the kingdom of Savoy, under the Piedmontese government and administration, that the Romish Clergy and the Jesuits have obtained the most absolute power. They exclude the people, as far as possible, from the knowledge of the Scriptures, and watch against the introduction of heretical books with a quarantine more strict than the laws of

the Orient against the Plague. Nevertheless, the labours of the colporteurs and others do now and then sow the seed of the word of God successfully. Then cometh the Devil and taketh it away. A young Savoyard, a poor little chimneysweep, purchased one day a Testament, for which he paid ten sous, and set himself immediately to read it. Delighted to possess the word of God, he, in his simplicity, ran to the priest, to show him the good bargain he had made with his savings. The priest took the book, and told the young Savoyard that it came from the hands of heretics, and that it was a book forbidden to be read. The peasant replied that everything he had read in the book told him about Christ, and, besides, said he, it is so beautiful! You shall see how beautiful it is, said the priest, seizing it, and casting it into the fire. The young Savoyard went away weeping.

I will be tolerant of everything, said Coleridge, except every other man's intolerance. This is a good rule. The worst thing in controversy is its tendency to engender an intolerant spirit. To be much in it, is like eating Lucifer matches for your daily food.

What was intended to strike light gets into the bowels, gives a man the colic, and makes him sour and mad. Nay more, if such food be persisted in, it sets his tongue on fire of hell, makes him a living spit-fire, a walking quarrel, an antagonism incarnate. Controversy, as a religious necessity of earnest contention for the faith once delivered to the saints, is a great and sacred duty, and good and blessed in its place with love, but it is bad as a habit. Without love, it is a beast that throws its rider, even if he gets fairly into the saddle, which he seldom does, for he almost always overleaps it, and falls on the other side.

But, what shall be said of controversy against a system that would take the Bread of Life from men's tables, and shut them up in prison for distributing and reading it? Is it not a sacred duty of humanity? Yea, it is; no man can receive such an account of the intolerance of this system as the following (which I shall tell as it was given to me in writing,) without a feeling of the deepest indignation.

It was of M. Pache, of the village of Morges, in Switzer