time has been charmed to spare; in which the loveliness of nature has striven with the graces of art and the influence of years to endow fit birth-places for immortal thoughts? Does he think that there is nothing in the hopes that are there excited; in the friendships that are there born, in the principles that are there instilled, in the veneration for greatness, and the love for goodness which are there induced, tending to that result which he admits; and that when he enumerates the mere subjects of formal examination, he truly catalogues the blessings which the university confers? Can he even look at the colleges of Oxford, trace their histories, learn that they have gradually arisen, hall by hall, from small and humble lodgings for poor scholars, and have been increased, and adorned, and enriched, by the successive piety and affection of ages; yet see them now grouped into a whole, which rather seems to be the embodiment of some one exquisite sentiment, springing from a single mind, and developed in harmonious beauty, like a flower expanding, veined and streaked from the principle of loveliness within it, than the gifts of various benefactors, and the works of various architects in different times, without acknowledging that it is an offspring of the love of learning, and the feeling of beauty, and the reverence for the good and the great, which form a glorious part of the national character of England, and have thus sprung, and blossomed, and ripened here. What should we think, even of a foreigner, visiting Oxford for mere curiosity, who should turn with disgust from its colleges, monastic looking buildings, in which the students are sentenced to reside,' but dwell with fond admiration upon its streets as beaming with modern intelligence,' 'macadamized' filled with handsome shops,' and 'traversed by the mail?'

"There was much in this (to me) extraordinary attack on our educational system, as I read it, among some of the disciples of the system, whose excellence inspired it, which made me almost suspect as I read it, that the edition had not only been pirated by foreign cupidity, but interpolated by foreign taste. I was perplexed to find an English gentleman prophesying that if our aristocracy, with the Ghoul's horrid taste, will obstinately feed itself on dead languages, while the lower classes are greedily digesting fresh, wholesome food,' the lower orders will be governed no longer by classical statesmen.' And to see him asserting, that against popular discontents, our simple and only remedy is, by resolutely breaking up the system of our public schools and universities, to show the people that we have nobly determined to become enlightened too; that is, to become land measurers, arithmeticians, chemists and buffoons,' with a smattering of a hundred things, a knowledge of a few, and the conceit of knowing all.

6

walk which alone would have hallowed the spot, if, alas,
there had not been those intimations in the work itself
of a purpose which, tending to desecrate the world, must
deprive all associations attendant on its accomplish-
ment of a claim to be dwelt on as holy. How melan-
choly is it to feel that intellectual congratulation which
attends the serene triumph of a life of studious toil,
chilled by the consciousness that the labour, the re-
search, the Asiatic splendour of illustration, have been
devoted, in part at least, to obtain a wicked end-not
in the headlong wantonness of youth, or in the wild
sportiveness of animal spirits-but urged by the deli-
berate-hearted purpose of crushing the light of human
hope, all that is worth living for, and all that is worth
dying for, and substituting for them nothing but a ray-
less scepticism! That evening walk is an awful thing
to meditate on; the walk of a man of rare capacities,
tending to his own physical decline, among the sereni-
ties of loveliest nature, enjoying the thought, that, in
the chief work of his life just accomplished, he had
embodied a hatred to the doctrines which teach men to
love one another, to forgive injuries, and to hope for a
diviner life beyond the grave; and exulting in the con-
viction, that this work would survive to teach its deadly
lesson to young ingenuous students when he should be
dust. One may derive consolation from reflecting that
the style is too meretricious, and the attempt too elabo-
rate and too subtle, to achieve the proposed evil, and in
hoping that there were some passages in the secret
history of the author's heart which may extenuate
melancholy error; but our personal veneration for suc-.
cessful toil is destroyed in the sense of the strange
malignity which blended with its impulses, and we feel
no desire to linger over the spot where so painful a
contradiction is presented as a charm."

REFLECTIONS ON AN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ASCEND
MONT BLANC.

Two questions will be asked by those who think the attempt worthy their consideration. Was it justifiable? and was it requited? I venture to answer both in the affirmative, with the hope that I am right as to the first, and the certainty that I am right as to the last.

"It is the fashion for those who have never felt the passion for ascending Mont Blane to deal out heavy censures against those who have made the venture, as wantonly risking their own lives and tempting the guides to risk theirs, without any adequate purpose. Mr. Murray's Guide Book, which, without offence, I may consider as the virtual representative of all the respectable commonplace on this subject, in one of those few passages which guide to nothing, and which, with the quotations from Lord Byron, may be regarded as taxes on the first necessary of travelling life, thus sums up "I participate in no such apprehensions. On the conthe case against us:- When Saussure ascended to trary, it is delightful to see the influences of classical make experiments at that height, the motive was a learning not fading upwards, but penetrating down-worthy one, but those who are impelled by curiosity wards, and inasses of the people rejoicing to recognise even from afar the skirts of its glory. The name of that famous stream, to which Sir Francis Head reverts with so much contempt, happily pronounced before thousands at Manchester, at the last anniversary of its Athenæum, by a man of genius capable of embracing the highest associations, and of sympathising with the lowliest, instead of exciting scorn, tended to heighten the effect of a noble endeavour to dignify and to refine those who are surrounded by care and engrossed by labour, and who were delighted by new veins of sympathy opening between their own lives and those which happier leisure had adorned with a more serene know ledge of inmortal things."

GIBBON.

"There is, it seems, an Hôtel Gibbon here, partly standing on the site of that garden in which the historian took his evening walk, after writing the last lines of the work to which many years had been devoted; a

alone are not justified in risking the lives of the guides. The pay tempts those brave fellows to encounter the danger, but their safety, devoted as they are to their employers, is risked for a poor consideration. It is no excuse that the employer thinks his own life worthless; here he ought to think of the safety of others; and yet scarcely a season passes without the attempt.' I cannot agree in the facts suggested in this passage, or in the inferences drawn from them. There is danger to be sure; that is, the possibility of serious accident, as 'tis dangerous to ride, to walk, to take a cold; as there is more danger in sliding on the ice than on dry ground; or as it is dangerous to go into the water before you have learned to swim; but I do not believe there was more danger in our attempt than in penetrating the glaciers to the Jardin; the difficulty was the fatigue, not the danger. Doctor Hamel and his friends, who persisted in ascending after a storm had shaken the snows and detained them for a whole day at the Grand Mulets, might not be able to acquit

6

themselves of blame when the fatal result occurred after all appearance of danger had passed; but I was assured by the chef, and by all the guides, that there was no more danger than always attends walking on the ice among crevices, and to the guides, who are accustomed to such exercise, none whatever; and I saw nothing to prove this judgment erroneous; indeed, I never felt any danger, except that of being obliged to turn back; unless, indeed, when I was carried by my mule into the thicket on a path which no moralist, even if he had been director of an insurance company, would have forbidden to a life insured in his office. The rule seems to be sustained by an unjust exception in favour of scientific experiment, as if there were nothing else worthy encountering risk for! Surely the desire to penetrate into the profoundest recesses of the universe, and expound their wonders to others, to acquire some knowledge of the greatness of its most marvellous objects beyond that expressed in mere figures of distances, in the hope to associate these with kindred thoughts, born of their majesties, is as worthy an object of risk-if risk there were--as to ascertain the density of the air at a given height. As to the hazard of the guides, which, except in expeditions undertaken against their judgment, is inconceivably small, I may ask whether every occupation must be stripped of all that elevates it and makes it heroicand whether any occupation can be truly heroic that has not in it something of danger? When Luckie Mucklebacket replies to our old friend Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck's expostulation on the dearness of her fish-It is not fish you are buying, 'tis men's lives,'-and is terribly justified by the catastrophe which follows, do we wish that fishermen should always keep their boats hauled on shore except in weather when no storm is possible lest some brave young fisher lad should meet poor Steenie's fate? O, no! life is a thing of hazards, or it is not life; but such stuff as dreams are made of.' Nor is it just to the guides-venal as their professional courtesies and bravery, in one sense, are--to represent them as being tempted only by the pay to encounter the unavoidable labours and possible dangers of the ascent. They love the enterprise; not merely the sense and praise of success;-but the actual intimacy they acquire with the mountain, which has cowered over their infancy; the glory of their native vale, and the daily wonder of their lives. I can bear witness, that, at least in our case, there was no reluctance to overcome; for although I kept my purpose as secret as I could, I was pestered by applications from guides, who having guessed it, wished engagements; and only escaped them by refusing to engage any, and referring them entirely to the chef. For myself I can truly say, that in making the attempt-although it was foolish enough in reference to any chance of accomplishment I was prompted by no idle wish for distinction; nor, if I had succeeded, should I have thought myself entitled to boast of any feat of physical prowess. On the contrary, so great are the appliances supplied by the guides to a person who has not the strongest and justest self reliance; so much is done for him, so little by him; he is so aided at every step; so supported, dragged, all but carried; that it seems to me a process more effeminate than manly, and by no means so unsuited to the nature of the ladies who have been among its achievers, as at first sight appears. With Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Nicholson, it was a real self-sustained effort; but with me, even as far as I went, it implied little more than the capacity of moving and enduring. My motive was an earnest love of nature, heightened in this instance almost into passion by the kindling perusal of many tales of the ascent, an ardent longing to unravel the mystery of a mountain which I believed to be unrivalled in Europe, but which to the eye seemed surpassed in height by many nameless hills; and this I esteem as worthy a motive as the wish to make experiments with the barometer.

"And was the effort, notwithstanding the failure of its loftier aim, repaid? Yes; richly. Except the panoramic views from the summit, which, even when unveiled, the successful adventurer has rarely the phy sical power to appreciate, I believe I obtained all the real fruits of the expedition; for I saw enough of the waving path above me to understand its majesty; and beyond my ken, there could be nothing greater. I know not what the mountain is; how it sits crouched, like Queen Constance, 'on the huge firm earth,' as if to hide its immensity from the superficial gazer. The object itself is so vast, so compressed to the eye between earth and heaven, partaking of both; so wonderful in the contrast between its ascertained immensity and its apparent lowness; that it is the acquisition of a great idea to understand at least enough of its foldings and recesses, to be able to image the rest. Viewed from Chamouni, the evening before I started, it was scarcely possible to believe it the monarch of European mountains;-it suggested associations rather of beauty than greatness; resembling a gigantic mosque, with its minarets and domes, such as might almost have been made with hands. With what different feelings did I gaze on it the evening after my descent, when the want of aerial perspective was supplied by pain-bought experience; when a faint, dark streak, bordering the glacier, denoted the enormous gulley; when the line of fretted white, on which the Grand Mulets seemed before to rest, expanded out into the mighty bosom of the rock-bound glacier, with its unfathomed crevices, and roar of hidden rivers, and all its border ice-caves of fantastical beauty; when the brown rock, presenting the aspect of a sinall penthoused window, rose before me, the fortress lord of ten thousand acres of snow; when beyond, on the upward tract, wilds immeasurably spread seemed lengthening;' and the small knot, which forms part of the figure called the Dromedary's Back, rose the snowdome of the star-lit solitude!' It may be said that I knew before that the mountain was more than 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, or, which is more to the purpose, 13,000 feet above the floor of Chamouni; but such knowledge was of no more worth than the distance of a star from the earth, in which hundreds of millions of miles are just worth to the imagination the line of cyphers which represents them in the table. In explaining such an object, the reality expands the imagination; the details, instead of detracting from the general impression, infinitely heighten it, perhaps the best test of all physical greatness, which is built up of things individually grand, and not mere vague outline; --so that the idea of Mont Blanc is to me no longer a mere diagram, but a living verity. Then there was the evening at the Grand Mulets, crowned by an imperishable vision, and followed by the midnight aspect of the heavens, which here, surveyed from a spot above the impurities of the denser atmosphere, assumed a darker hue, and justified the Homeric description, Ether all opens;' and though it is true that the same glory would have been vouchsafed if this rock had been the summit of my ambition, still it would not have been attended with the same interest, half wild, half solemn, which surrounded it as an incident in the greater adventure. Although, therefore, the attempt cost about a thousand francs, a day's scruples, and another day's misgivings; some slight sense of disappointment at the moment of return; and some hours labour, amounting to suffering; I rejoice that it was made. The suffering was no doubt severe; but, as far as it can now be recollected, it aids in realizing the tracks along which it was borne; while the earth grandeur, the cloud visions, and even the physical relief and enjoyment of the way will enrich the past, so long as it shall have power to cast sweetness on the present and the future."

ADVANTAGES OF FOREIGN TRAVELS.

"In estimating the wealth with which the mind may be endowed by excursions as rapid as these into foreign

sweet influences of sky and earth; but there is no picture, enriched by the heart's experiences, to break the elementary vastness of the imagery in which the voice of eternity is heard. In the Homeric poems, all-vivid as they are

As full of spirit as the month of May,

And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer,'

lands, I think it will be found to consist almost exclu- | sively in the images which the scenes of the external world have impressed upon it, and in the feelings they have excited. It would be obviously absurd to hope that, from intercourse so transient and imperfect as the railway carriage, the steam-boat, and the table d'hôte allow, any knowledge of the character of the people of the fair regions at which a holiday traveller glances can be acquired beyond a few picturesque aspects of glancing light and shadow. You cannot, indeed, pass through any section of Germany, however rapidly, without becoming sensible to the charm of that unaffected good-nature with which all classes seem imbued; as sociated in the women with a quiet serene grace, a benevolent repose of manner; and in the men, especially the young students, with a brotherly affection for each other, and a disposition to be, and to make happy, which refers their university duels to the mere tyranny of custom. Indeed, the gashes which these encounters have left, may generally be observed scarring faces which beam with good-humour, and show how little concern hatred, or envy, or any real passion, has in producing those passages of foolish bravery. In Switzer-beauty of form. It breathes again in Virgil, but still land it would be a sad waste of precious hours to spend them in endeavouring to pluck out the heart of the mysteries of character which lie within the human forms which are dwarfed by the mountains among which they move and perish, while the mountains them selves, with the snows they sustain, and the streams they nurture, freely expand to the gaze and invite the eye, the heart, and the imagination to concur in holding the most intimate communion with their grandeurs.

But the knowledge of scenery which is achieved by such excursions, is all clear, unalloyed, and priceless gain, for it not only enriches the chamber of memory with the pictures which can be expanded at will, but nourishes the power of appreciating all other kindred scenes, and redoubles the charm of those we may afterwards enjoy at home."

THE PLEASURE DERIVED FROM THE CONTEMPLATION
OF FINE SCENERY.

"The pleasure which is derived from the contemplation of fine scenery is, I apprehend, nearly in proportion to the power with which the mind grasps its colours and forms, and realises a kindred between their attributes and its own. The mere presentment of the mightiest external varieties of the earth's surface to the eye of curiosity, except in the comparatively rare instances when they melt into harmonious pictures, can excite at most only a sort of stupified wonder. To the youth of a poet, gifted with a peculiar sense of beauty, they may be, as they were to Wordsworth, a passion, an appetite, a feeling, and a love;' though even then it may be doubted whether the premature development of deeper sources of pleasure has not unconsciously blended the spiritual with the external. But to children in general, the book of nature spread out before them in all its wildest sublimities, lies unread; and it is not until they have begun not merely to think and to feel, but to reflect on their own past thoughts and feelings, (which they have gradually associated with the scenes in which their emotions have been born and cherished,) that they begin to understand and to love the world without them. In this respect the experience of every youth of sensibility and reflection is a picture in little of the history of his species. Old as the world has grown in the arts of life and death, and early as divine inspiration enkindled the spirit of poetry in its favoured inheritors, it is only in times comparatively modern that the mind seems to have awakened to a sense of its external grandeurs. In the Hebrew sacred poetry each image is singly contemplated as attesting the glory of God, or is employed as the symbol of his terrors. The breath of a pastoral simplicity is wafted from the depths of patriarchal ages; Mount Sinai flashes with the terror of the law; and the harp of David sometimes trembles with the

the pictures are of the camp, the battle, the city, the
fleet-not of the mountain and flood; and the frequent
similes by which they are studded, instead of indi-
cating an aptitude in the poet's mind for informing
the shapes of the universe with life and passion, or
clothing human affections and powers with the aspects
of matter, show, by the imperfect associations which
often introduce them, and the mosaic air they give to the
composition they variegate, how faintly the sympathies
between the world of matter and of thought were per-
ceived even by the genius which inspired them.
the poetry of Grecce became more refined, the sentiment
of scenery was still further refined, until it was lost in
the tendency to make all things subservient to the
with a subdued and courtly sweetness, and scarcely is
felt again till it bursts out in lusty life in Chaucer.
Hence, after mingling with the flush of Elizabethan
genius, enriching the passion of Shakspeare, mantling
in the luxury of Fletcher, and embossing the stateliness
of Milton; it was crusted by the iron sense of Dryden,
dissipated amidst the artificial brilliances of Pope, and
feebly held its obscure way beneath the frost-like
etiquette and sparkling conceit of our Augustine age.
In the revival of the true poetical spirit it has expanded
triumphantly among us, breaking forth into gorgeous
enthusiasm in Thomson, becoming coldly pure in
Cowper, shedding a consecrating influence on a multi-
tude of glorious scenes in Scott, and enabling us to
consecrate all scenes for ourselves by the teachings of
Wordsworth. No one can doubt that the deeper serious-
ness which Christianity has shed through our human
life has attached itself to the silent forms of nature, and
has given them an interest which, reflected and redu-
plicated by our poetry and romance, is now not con-
fined to men of genius, or even to men of thoughtful
leisure, but is felt more or less vividly as a pervading
sentiment of common existence, gleaming in upon the
busiest hours, and deepening the long-drawn sigh for re-
pose from the bustle of the world, with a longing after
the visitations of beauty and the approaches of wisdom."

THE NANT D'ARPENAZ.

"The Nant D'Arpenaz is the fall of a small rivulet, which gushes down unseen through fissures of the lofty rock; then, in mid-air, leaps from it; and, meeting immediately with little projections, is dashed into fine atoms; floats off some two hundred feet from the ground in an everlasting yet ever-changing feather; and though a portion of the water may be caught by the lower rock and may drizzle down it, the body of water actually disperses; makes itself air into which it vanishes.' It is like a spirit embodied-no, not embodied, shaped— breaking from the rock; ever perishing, yet ever renewed; an image of purity, evanescence, duration.' Its substance is as slight as its identity; the most ethereal of all things which in any sense endure light,snow-fall in the river;' or a wreath of smoke, yet existing as a waterfall for thousands of years, the Ariel of inanimate matter! I gazed back upon it till it looked like a speck of gossamer cloud; and sighed for it even while the vale expanding wider and wider, and becoming grander and grander, dazzled me with its luxuriance and its brightness."

-as the

No. 67.]

London Magazine:

A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND INSTRUCTION
FOR GENERAL READING.