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home, feeling that I had broken friendship with the softest-hearted, simplestheaded fool at the bar. Why, man, you would turn the whole fraternity into a gang of knight-errants, roaming up and down Wall street seeking to set this crooked world straight again."

"And so they ought to be, Mr. Flourish."

"Hum! I can't say I'm ready to give an opinion on that matter. But the girl, I see, is fairly on my hands. I'll just step down and tell my young men to put one or two things off till next day, and come back to go over the case again with you."

Glorious old Flourish! The sensibilities are there, after all, hard as it is to find them. Beneath all his rich clients, and worldly wisdom, and long briefs, there is a true man's heart beating, still, as there is in the bosom of many a hard-faced, wrinkled old lawyer beside. Fraud, and wrong, and heartlessness there are among us, God knows! But He and He only knows, also, the deeds that have been done in secret in those dingy, dusty offices, which shall stand forth effulgently when the great book is opened at the Judgment-day!

IV.

I was busy with the police authorities that evening, and had no time to communicate with Alice; but the next morning when I saw her brought into court, looking so broken-hearted and helpless, I blamed myself for having left her thus to drink the cup of bitterness to the very dregs. In a few whispered words I bade her be of good cheer; but she scarcely seemed to heed me at all, so oppressed was sho by the sight of the crowd, and the keen sense of her forlorn condition. Save her poor mother, who had risen from a sick bed to accompany her, she did not know that she had a friend there. Even I, though she knew I meant her kindly, had been the unwilling means of placing her there. I looked eagerly around the court-room. On a front bench sat Mr. Forceps, the pawnbroker, chief witness for the prosecution; and some distance behind was my old client, true to his promise, and pleased to have at last a part to take in court. It seemed to him like a little rehearsal for the great drama of his own

case.

The district attorney opened the case, and was about to call me as the first witness. Mr. Flourish had not yet made his appearance. Greatly to my relief, the pawnbroker came forward, and whispered into the attorney's ear, who immediately called him to the stand.

"I believe I must give Mr. Forceps the precedence," he said to me.

"I think you had better, brother Rowland," answered Flourish, over my shoulder, at the same time divesting himself of his overcoat, and distributing good-humored though somewhat patronizing recognitions among the smaller fry of lawyers around him.

Mr. Forceps testified to the attempt made to pass the counterfeit coin on him, as previously detailed. His direct examination was soon over, and he turned to Mr. Flourish with a smile of confidence, which to me seemed not altogether natural. It looked as if he were bracing himself up for a contest of nerve with the counsel for the defense. I have seen a great many very honest witnesses do the same thing.

But if Mr. Forceps looked for a grand display of inquisitorial tactics, he was destined to be mistaken. Mr. Flourish simply turned for a moment towards him remarking:

"I only want to know if I have understood you aright, Mr. Forceps; I think you said this was your only transaction with the prisoner-I mean the only occasion on which you received money from her."

"I never received any money at all from her, unless you call that thing money," pointing to the coin. "Perhaps you call that money; but I don't, sir." And Mr. Forceps smiled approvingly at his own retort."

"How long did I understand that you had this coin in your possession ?" blandly rejoined the counsel.

"No time at all; I knew it was bad the minute it touched the drawer, and took it out and returned it."

"You took it out, and returned it," replied Flourish, as if mechanically repeating the words. "That will do, sir."

Mr. Bullion then testified to the character of the coin, and to the prisoner's admission in my office that it was the same one she had offered to the pawnbroker. The prosecution rested.

Without any formal opening of the defense, Mr. Flourish nodded to me, and I took the stand. The district attorney threw himself back in his chair, and listened carelessly while I detailed the particulars of my interview with Alice on the eventful Saturday night. But when I mentioned the knife-marks

on the coin I had given her, his practiced mind foresaw at once our line of defense.. It was, doubtless, the first intimation he had received that any substantial defense would be attempted; and in his surprise he started to his feet, and directed a searching glance, first at me, and then in rapid succession at the prisoner, her counsel, and his own witnesses.

"Have you ever seen that marked coin since, Mr. Quidam?"

"I have."

"When and where?"

"It is here, said I," producing it; "I received it back, about ten days ago, from a client, Mr. Richard Grosvenor." Having satisfied myself that I was positive as to the identity of the coin, the district attorney allowed me to stand aside, and Mr. Flourish called Grosvenor, who, of course, confirmed my statement, as to the receipt of the coin from him, at the time of its reappearance.

"Will you state, Mr. Grosvenor, if you can, how that coin came into your hands?"

"I received it," said the old man-a slight color coming into his bloodless face" on the evening of Saturday, the -th of December, from Mr. Forceps, the pawnbroker."

"How can you be so positive as to the precise date, Mr. Grosvenor, and the identity of the coin?" asked the district attorney.

"The date, sir, I fix by this." producing one of Mr. Forcep's tickets; "and the coin-ah me, sir, it is the only gold piece I have had for many a long day. I have spent my money in the law, sir; but I am going to get it all back soon. You must know I have a case, sir"

From the details of Mr. Grosvenor's case, we were saved by the district attorney. His hawk-eye had caught a glimpse of his chief witness gliding softly through the crowd, toward the door.

"Mr. Forceps! Mr. Forceps! officer, close that door, and let no man pass," he thundered. "Bring that witness back here!"

Flushed with excitement, his fine form drawn up to its utmost height, and his glorious eyes flashing with indignation at the foul wrong which had been attempted and almost effected in the sacred name of justice, he stood, surrounded by an astonished group, the only one that seemed to retain any selfpossession. Even we who had been in the secret, and planned the surprise, were less masters of the scene. looked, indeed, all that he was the faithful minister of retributive justice, magnifying his office by a love of right, before which all petty ambitions sank into nothingness.

He

Alas! that form and face live only in the memory of us who loved him. A sad, sad day it was when we heard that the lustre of those eyes was dimmed in untimely death, and heavy hearts, mourning as but few sorrows can make strong men mourn, had we, the funeral train, when the bar followed their chieftain to the tomb. In the midst of his years and his labors, as a great ship goes down in the van of the battle, so went he down into the depths of the grave.

It scarcely need be added, that the jury acquitted Alice, without leaving their box, and that the pawnbroker, charged both with uttering counterfeit coin, and with perjury, slept that night in the cell she had left. Perhaps some time I may tell of what afterwards happened to her, as well as to my old client, and his interminable case. But now there is sadness on my heart, as I think of that scene in court, and I am garrulous no longer.

IN

HIGH LIFE-ON THE MOUNTAINS.

"On the mountains dwells freedom;
The foul odor of graves
Reaches not to the blue ether."

N days of old, as in our own. liberty has ever reared her standard and proclaimed her triumphs aloud on mountain heights. Even the weary wanderer feels his courage strengthened and his heart expanding, as he reaches the lofty summit, and sees the world at his feet. He leaves the narrow bounds of daily strife behind him; free as the eagle that hangs still higher in the pure air, and binds the clouds to the world beneath, he looks around him, where, even on the airy wings of the wind, the sad sounds of man's petty sorrows and joys can reach him no longer. Lifted high above the painful tumult of life, abandoned by all but the great mother nature, he receives, as it were, a second time at her hands, and from her unstained altar, the gift of life, and the cheerful courage of trusting youth. The clear, bracing air, the silent solitude of the scene, the magnificence and grandeur of the prospect, and his elevation above the world, all conspire to strengthen, to elevate, nay, to inspire the dweller on lofty mountains. And this feeling is common to the greatest among men, and to the simple shepherd. With speechless joy the herdsman climbs once more, after the fierce rigor of winter, up to his cherished heights, where, as the children of Afghanistan enthusiastically say, the leaping waters are as clear as diamonds, where the luxuriant verdure resembles a carpot of emeralds, and the atmosphere is sweet with musk; where, as they add in the boundless love of their mountain pastures, the air itself is so full of life and vigor, that even were there no water, it alone would make the plants grow and blossom.

But mountains are noble objects, and inspire us with even higher feelings when seen from afar. They are, after all, the great landmarks of the earth, locking in, as it were, large districts and the children of men that dwell therein, the most perfect boundary lines of countries and nations, and the natural limits of powerful kingdoms.

How pleasant it is to the eye to see a vast landscape closed in, on the far

horizon, by gently-swelling heights, as "hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." How grandly they loom up, as in Norway, in proud, silent majesty, from the raging ocean, to the very clouds in the heavens! More impressive yet is the sight, when, from the midst of an immense plain, a wall of mountains is reared in bold and gigantic forms, as where the colossal chain of the Alps rises in stately grandeur on the northern frontier of Lombardy. When the eye has been tired with a long, level surface, when the monotonous steppe or the swelling prairie has sorely wearied the mind, that ever thirsts for variety, then it greets the mountains with peculiar pleasure. It rests delighted on their varied forms, their ever-changing colors, their proud, upward tendency. All that is low, shapeless, and vague in the plain, becomes here firm, permanent, and aspiring. Now they are cheerful and pleasing, stretching in gently swelling undulations far away, and softening by rich verdure and light indentations the rugged character of higher ranges. Now they rise high into the air, their proud heads hid in dark clouds, or crowned with eternal snow, reaching up into inaccessible space, and carrying apparently the very vault of heaven their mighty, massive columns. Hence the imagination of almost all nations has bound them up with the higher gods: here it is an Atlas bearing the heavens on his colossal shoulders; there it is an Olympus, the blissful home of the immortals.

on

The lower ranges, it is true, are apt to be but rough and rugged; they please us little, when compared with the rich, fertile plains by their side, and convey no other idea to the mind than that, as Euripides said, "They are hard soil that can be tilled only by still harder labor." Hence the universal preference given to truly Alpine ranges. Their gigantic height, their massiveness in themselves, the terrible steepness of their sides, impress us with awe. Here parallel chains and groups, alike rugged and snowy, press on the principal crest, and send their flanks far into the lower grounds. An endless mass of sharp ridges and bare peaks, mixed with gigantic masses of pure snow, fading coldly into the blue horizon, present a scene of sublime quiet and repose, unbroken but by the avalanche or the thunder. Their glaciers and snow-fields, which are gilt only, but never warmed by the sun, and from which, through rents in the clouds, the green, blooming world is seen far below, the feeling of immutability suggested by their stupendous height, even the dizzy paths that lead over frightful abysses, and the "roads of terror" that pass close by unfathomed crevices and threatening masses of snow-all these add fear to our admiration and awe to our pleasure. It seems, at first, as if nature had created all this grand scenery for herself only, utterly mindless of man. And yet even here she has not forgotten him. Close by those regions of Titanic confusion and fearful solitude, at the very side of those gigantic rocks, in which we fancy we see the skeleton of the earth, and of those dazzling, deathhiding fields of snow and ice, there greet us sweet meadows with fragrant Alpine flowers. Green pastures spread their soft carpet to the edge of the icy mass, and streams gambol merrily over rock and root. Thus, here, also, life cometh out of death, and the awfully grand is kindly blended with the gently beautiful.

The effect of mountain scenery on the eye, is naturally much varied by lights and colors; the whole hue is very different in the clear, warm air of a southern landscape, and in the moist, vapory atmosphere of the North. The Alps glitter and glare in the dazzling splendor of everlasting ice, and yet greet us with the bright freshness of the color of youth, so that Italian poets with justice speak of their forest-covered brows, as of fit emblems of all that is imperishable. The granite fastnesses of Sweden loom up in subdued tints, fretted as they are by the tooth of time, and covered with the tender mantle of warm but sad-colored mosses. Dim, dismal mists forever shroud their hoary heads, and the melancholy songs of northern bards see, in their weather-beaten, decaying baldness, the irresistible power of age.

and year, and herein lies one of their greatest beauties. As the deep valleys are now lighted up by gorgeous floods of sunshine, and now buried in dark night; as bold spurs, losing themselves into the plain, cast deep shadows on a sunny landscape, or rise, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, from out a sea of shadows, the whole of the mountain range assumes a new form. But more important still, for their effect at a distance, than the variety of different hues and changing shadows, is the principal form of the mountains themselves. A long, straight line, rising to nearly equal height at all points, gives to a chain of mountains the appearance of a mere wall or rampart, that closes the horizon, and fills the mind with undefined sadness. Far more pleasing is the impression, when bold heights and sharp-pointed peaks break the uniformity here and there, as in our own Blue Ridge. Some countries boast of odd round mountains, that rise suddenly from the midst of large plains: they are mere shapeless masses, without any proportion, and convey not unfrequently to the mind the painful idea of a colossal grave-mound. Now and then, as on our northern waters, and in almost all long, far-stretching chains, formations are found, that appear to a lively fancy like familiar objects-a sleeping bear, a striking profile, or even a whole standing figure. Such forms may, of course, please our imagination and occupy our memory, but they often affect, unpleasantly, our æsthetic feeling, which cannot be satisfied with what is merely grotesque or amusing.

Mountains are, unfortunately, much less known than valleys. Even prejudices are nourished against them, and men fancy that the snow-covered peaks and the silently wandering glaciers are useless in the great household of nature. As, if under the rule of the Almighty, all things were not made to work together in sweet harmony. Did he not say, in early days, "Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain?" For it is from the eternal snow and ice of these apparently sterile heights, that, year after year, abundant streams descend and nourish the thirsty earth. In the temperate zones, this advantage is less clearly seen, as rain or snow there falls at all seasons. The colors of mountain scenes Only now and then, as in the glaciers change with every season of the day of the Alps, the amazed eye of the

wanderer sees in summer-time foaming torrents of whitish blue water rush forth from dark, dismal caves under the fields of snow. These are the inexhaustible sources of the rivers and streams that come from the Alps, and, as the Rhine or Rhone, form the mighty high-roads for the commerce of Europe. So it is with all snow-covered mountains; and vast, unmeasured regions would never be more than arid deserts, if their great rivers were not incessantly fed by the everlasting snow that crowns the silent pinnacles, and ever melts slowly but surely, and ever grows again upon the lofty summit. In hotter climes, where, for months and months, no blessed shower falls from the clouds, where the dry soil cracks, and all vegetation perishes, life would be impossible, were it not for such periodic supplies, furnished by long mountain ranges.

The solemn solitude and the threatening aspect of the loftiest peaks often make the masses of people regard them as objects of fear and terror. They shrink from

"that sublimity which reigns enthroned, Holding joint rule with solitude divine Among yon rocky fells that bid defiance To steps the most adventurously bold. There silence dwells profound, or if the cry Of high-poised eagles breaks at times the calm, The haunted echoes no response return."

The traveler, who passes near them, hastens his steps to avoid the avalanche, and to save his eyesight. A few only, impelled by a noble ardor for the study of nature, have ventured to ascend to the loftiest regions, like Saussure, Humboldt, Agassiz, and Hooker. Nor are the terrors of these enchanted regions merely imaginary. Soon after the line of eternal snow is passed, a general and painful uneasiness seizes the wanderer. The most remarkable sensation, however, is that of utter exhaustion. When Lieutenant Wood was on the "Terraced Roof of the World" in Pamir, he wished to explore the depth of the famous lake Sir-i-kol, that spreads its placid waters at a height of more than 15,000 feet above the sea. He tried to cut a hole in the ice; but a few blows consumed all his strength. A few moments, it is true, sufficed for his recovery; but he found any muscular exertion almost impossible. Running a distance of less than fifty yards, he lost his breath, and felt an intense pain in his lungs that did not leave him for

hours. He could not speak aloud without great effort, and his pulse immediately rose in an alarming manner. Saussure and his companions suffered like inconveniences; they became irresistibly drowsy, lost their appetite, and could not quench their violent, painful thirst. When Humboldt was ascending the Chimborazo, and already quite near the summit, he had to abandon the enterprise, because large drops of blood oozed out from under his nails and his eyelids.

But there is a beauty in mountains that has always been found amply to repay such fatigue and such dangers. Even in the terrific passes of the Himalaya, where man and beast are alike distressed, where thousands of birds perish from the mere violence of the wind, and furious thunder-storms add to the terror, even there the beauty of the scenery is such as to compensate the weary traveler for all he endures. "During the day," says Mary Somerville, "the stupendous size of the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness of their distant outline, melting into the pale blue sky, contrasted with the deep azure above, is a scene of wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of earth and snowlight, the effect is of unparalleled solemnity, and no language can describe the splendor of the sunbeams at daybreak, streaming between the high peaks and throwing their gigantic shadows on the mountains below!"

Even ice and snow assume, at times, forms of wondrous beauty. Glaciers spread their resplendent mirrors over vast regions, and cover them closely with their transparent masses. Famous and well known in the European Alps, they are found wherever mountains arise, that are throughout the year covered with snow. The most imposing are found high in the north: in Norway they reach down to the water's edge. On the eastern coast of Iceland, a huge glacier is slowly approaching the coast, and already leaves barely room for a road; it will, it is feared, ere long form an impassable barrier between two parts of the island. Spitzbergen boasts probably of the largest of glaciers; for Captain Scoresby tells us that the "Hornsound" is nearly

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