The cloud is to the mountain what motion is to the sea; it gives to it an infinite variety of expression—gives it a life—gives it joy and sufferance, alternate calm, and terror, and anger. Without the cloud, the mountain would still be sublime, but monotonous; it would have but a picture-like existence.

How thoroughly they understand and sympathize with each other—these glorious playmates, these immortal brethren! Sometimes the cloud lies supported in the hollow of the hill, as if out of love it feigned weariness, and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the equal eye of heaven.

As you approach the mountains, it seems that the clouds begin already to arrange themselves in bolder and more fantastic shapes. They have a fellowship here. They built their mountains upon mountains—their mountains which are as light as air—huge structures built at the giddy suggestion of the passing breeze. Theirs is the wild liberty of endless change, by which they compensate themselves for their thin and fleeting existence, and seem to mock the stationary forms of their stable brethren fast rooted to the earth. And how genially does the sun pour his beam upon these twin grandeurs! For a moment they are assimilated; his ray has permeated, has etherealized the solid mountain, has fixed and defined the floating vapour. What now is the one but a stationary cloud? what is the other but a risen hill?—poised not in the air but in the flood of light.

I am never weary of watching the play of these giant children of the earth. Sometimes a soft white cloud, so pure, so bright, sleeps, amidst open sunshine, nestled like an infant in the bosom of a green mountain. Sometimes the rising upcurling vapour will linger Just above the summit, and seem for a while an incense exhaling from this vast censer. Sometimes it will descend, and drape the whole side of the hill as with a transparent veil. I have seen it sweep between me and the mountain like a sheeted ghost, tall as the mountain, till the strong daylight dissolved its thin substance, and it rose again in flakes to decorate the blue heavens. But oh, glorious above all! when on some brightest of days, the whole mass of whitest clouds gathers midway upon the snow-topped mountain. How magnificent then is that bright eminence seen above the cloud! How it seems rising upwards—how it seems borne aloft by those innumerable wings—by those enormous pinions which I see stretching from the cloudy mass! What an ascension have we here!—what a transfiguration! O Raphael! I will not disparage thy name nor thy art, but thy angels bearing on their wings the brightening saint to Heaven—what are they to the picture here?

Look! there—fairly in the sky—where we should see but the pure ether—above the clouds which themselves are sailing high in serenest air—yes, there, in the blue and giddy expanse, stands the solid mountain, glittering like a diamond. O God! the bewildered reason pent up in cities, toils much to prove and penetrate thy being and thy nature—toils much in vain. Here, I reason not—I see. The Great King lives—lo there is his throne.

To him who quits the plain for the mountain, how the character of the cloud alters. That which seemed to belong exclusively to the sky, has been drawn down and belongs as plainly to the earth. Mount some noble eminence and look down—you will see the clouds lying on and about the landscape, as if they had fallen on it. You are on the steadfast earth, and they are underneath you. You look down perhaps on the lake, and there is a solitary cloud lying settled on it; when the rest of the fleecy drove had risen from their couch, this idle sleeper had been left dreaming there.

Or stay below, and see the sun rise in the valley. When all is warm and clear upon the heights, and the tops of the hills are fervid with the beams of heaven, there still lies a cold white mass of cloud about your feet. It is not yet morning in the valley. There the cloud has been slumbering all night—there it found its home. It also will by and by receive the beam, and then it will arise, enveloping the hill as it ascends; the hill will have a second dawn; the cloud will assume its proud station in the sky; but it will return again to the valley at night.

I am sailing on the lake of Brienz on a day golden with sunbeams. The high ridge of its rocky castellated hills is distinct as light can make it. Yet half-way up, amidst the pine forests, there lies upon the rich verdure a huge motionless cloud. What does it there? Its place was surely in the sky. But no; it belongs, like ourselves, to the earth.

Is nature gaily mocking us, when upon her impregnable hills she builds these castles in the air? But, good heavens! what a military aspect all on a sudden does this mountain-side put on. Mark that innumerable host of pine-trees. What regiments of them are marching up the hill in the hot sun, as if to storm those rocky forts above! What serried ranks! and yet there are some stragglers—some that have hastened on in front, some that have lingered in the rear. Look at that tall gigantic pine breasting the hill alone, like an old grenadier. How upright against the steep declivity! while his lengthened shadow is thrown headlong back behind him down the precipice. I should be giddy to see such a shadow of my own. I should doubt if it would consent to be drawn up by the heels to the summit of the mountain—whether it would not rather drag me down with it into the abyss.

I have seen hills on which lay the clear unclouded sky, making them blue as itself. I have gazed on those beautiful far-receding valleys—as the valley of the Rhone—when they have appeared to collect and retain the azure ether. They were full of Heaven. Angels might breathe that air. And yet I better love the interchange, the wild combination of cloud and mountain. Not cloud that intercepts the sun, but that reflects its brilliancy, and brightens round the hills. It is but a gorgeous drapery that the sky lets fall on the broad Herculean shoulders of the mountain. No, it should not intercept the beams of the great luminary; for the mountain loves the light. I have observed that the twilight, so grateful to the plain, is mortal to the mountain. It craves light—it lifts up its great chalice for light—this great flower is the first to close, to fade, at the withdrawal of the sun. It stretches up to heaven seeking light; it cannot have too much—under the strongest beam it never droops—its brow is never dazzled.

But then these clouds, you will tell me, that hover about the mountain, all wing, all plumage, with just so much of substance for light to live in them—these very clouds can descend, and thicken, and blacken, and cover all things with an inexpressible gloom. True, and the mountain, or what is seen of it, becomes now the very image of a great and unfathomable sorrow. And only the great can express a great sadness. This aspect of nature shall never by me be forgotten; nor will I ever shrink from encountering it. If you would know the gloom of heart which nature can betray, as well as the glory it can manifest, you must visit the mountains. For days together, clouds, huge, dense, unwieldy, lie heavily upon the hills—which stand, how mute, how mournful!—as if they, too, knew of death. And look at the little lake at their feet. What now is its tranquillity when not a single sunbeam plays upon it? Better the earth opened and received it, and hid for ever its leaden despondency. And now there comes the paroxysm of terror and despair; deep thunders are heard, and a madness flashes forth in the vivid lightning. There is desperation amongst the elements. But the elements, like the heart of man, must rage in vain—must learn the universal lesson of submission. With them, as with humanity, despair brings back tranquillity. And now the driving cloud reveals again the glittering summits of the mountains, and light falls in laughter on the beaming lake.

How like to a ruined Heaven is this earth! Nay, is it not more beautiful for being a ruin?

Who can speak of lakes and not think of thee, beautiful Leman? How calm! how exquisitely blue! Let me call it a liquid sky that is spread here beneath us. And note how, where the boat presses, or the oar strikes, it yields ever a still more exquisite hue—akin to the violet, which gives to the rude pressure a redoubled fragrance—akin to the gentlest of womankind, whose love plays sweetest round the strokes of calamity.

Oh, there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I have seen thee in all thy moods, in all thy humours. I have watched thee in profoundest calm; and suddenly, with little note of preparation, seen thee lash thy blue waves into a tempest. How beautiful in their anger were those azure waves crested with their white foam! And at other times, when all has been a sad unjoyous calm, I have seen, without being able to trace whence the light had broken, a soft expanse of brightness steal tremulous over the marble waters. A smile that seemed to speak of sweet caprice—that seemed to say that half its anger had been feint.

Yes, verily there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I lie rocking in a boat midway between Vevay and Lausanne. On the opposite coast are the low purple hills couching beside the lake. But there, to the left, what an ethereal structure of cloud and snowy mountain is revealed to me! What a creation of that spirit of beauty which works its marvels in the unconscious earth! The Alps here, while they retain all the aËrial effect gathered from distance, yet seem to arise from the very margin of the lake. The whole scene is so ethereal, you fear to look aside, lest when you look again it may have vanished like a vision of the clouds.

And why should these little boats, with their tall triangular sails, which glide so gracefully over the water, be forgotten? The sail, though an artifice of man, is almost always in harmony with nature. Nature has adopted it—has lent it some of her own wild privileges—her own bold and varied contrasts of light and shade. The surface of the water is perhaps dark and overclouded; the little upright sail is the only thing that has caught the light, and it glitters there like a moving star. Or the water is all one dazzling sheet of silver, tremulous with the vivid sunbeam, and now the little sail is black as night, and steals with bewitching contrast over that sparkling surface.

But we fly again to the mountain. Tourists are too apt to speak of the waterfall as something independent, something to be visited as a separate curiosity. There may be some such. But in general, the waterfall should be understood as part of the mountain—as the great fountain which adorns the architecture of its rocks, and the gardens of its pine forests. It belongs to the mountain. Pass through the valley, and look up; you see here and there thin stripes of glittering white, noiseless, motionless. They are waterfalls, which, if you approach them, will din you with their roar, and which are dashing headlong down, covered with tossing spray. Or ascend the face of the mountain, and again look around and above you. From all sides the waterfalls are rushing. They bear you down. You are giddy with their reckless speed. How they make the rock live! What a stormy vitality have they diffused around them! You might as well separate a river from its banks as a waterfall from its mountain.

And yet there is one which I could look at for hours together, merely watching its own graceful movements. Let me sit again in imagination in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, under the fall of the Staubbach. Most graceful and ladylike of descents! It does not fall; but over the rock, and along the face of the precipice, developes some lovely form that nature had at heart;—diffuses itself in down-pointing pinnacles of liquid vapour, fretted with the finest spray. The laws of gravity have nothing to do with its movements. It is not hurled down; it does not leap, plunging madly into the abyss; it thinks only of beauty as it sinks. No noise, no shock, no rude concussion. Where it should dash against the projecting rock, lo! its series of out-shooting pinnacles is complete, and the vanishing point just kisses the granite. It disappoints the harsh obstruction by its exquisite grace and most beautiful levity, and springs a second time from the rock without trace of ever having encountered it.

The whole side of the mountain is here barren granite. It glides like a spirit down the adverse and severe declivity. It is like Christ in this world. The famous fall of the Griesbach, near the lake of Brienz, thunders through the most luxuriant foliage; the Staubbach meets the bare rock with touches of love, and a movement all grace, and a voice full of reconcilement.

Mont Blanc! Mont Blanc! I have not scaled thy heights so boldly or so far as others have, but I will yield to none in worship of thee and thy neighbour mountains. Some complain that the valley of Chamouni is barren; they are barren souls that so complain. True, it has not the rich pastures that lie bordering on the snow in the Oberland. But neither does it need them. Look down the valley from the pass of the Col de Balme, and see summit beyond summit; or ascend the lateral heights of La FlegÈre, and see the Alps stretched out in a line before you, and say if any thing be wanting. Here is the sculpture of landscape. Stretched yourself upon the bare open rock, you see the great hills built up before you, from their green base to their snowy summits, with rock, and glacier, and pine forests. You see how the Great Architect has wrought.

And for softer beauty, has not the eye been feasted even to excess—till you cried "hold—enough!" till you craved repose from excitement—along the whole route, from Lausanne to this spot? What perfect combinations of beauty and sublimity—of grandeur of outline with richness of colouring—have you not been travelling through!

It seems a fanciful illustration, and yet it has more than once occurred to me, when comparing the scenery of the Oberland with that of the valley of Chamouni and its neighbourhood; the one resembles the first work—be it picture or poem—of a great genius; the other, the second. On his first performance, the artist lavishes beauties of every description; he crowds it with charms; all the stores of his imagination are at once unfolded, and he must find a place for all. In the second, which is more calm and mature, the style is broader, the disposition of materials more skilful: the artist, master of his inspiration, no longer suffers one beauty to crowd upon another, finds for all not only place, but place sufficient; and, above all, no longer fears being simple or even austere. I dare not say that the Oberland has a fault in its composition—so charming, so magnificent have I found it; but let me mark the broad masterly style of this Alpine region. As you journey from Villeneuve, with what a gentle, bland magnificence does the valley expand before you! The hills and rocks, as they increase in altitude, still fall back, and reveal in the centre the towering Dent du Midi, glittering with its eternal snows. The whole way to Martigny you see sublimity without admixture of terror; it is beauty elevated into grandeur, without losing its amenity. And then, if you cross by the Col de Balme, leaving the valley of the Rhone as you ascend, and descending upon the valley of Chamouni, where the Alps curve before you in most perfect grouping—tell me if it is possible for the heart of man to desire more. Nay, is not the heart utterly exhausted by this series of scenic raptures?

For ever be remembered that magnificent pass of the Col de Balme! If I have a white day in my calendar, it is the day I spent in thy defiles. Deliberately I assert that life has nothing comparable to the delight of traversing alone, borne leisurely on the back of one's mule, a mountain-pass such as this. Those who have stouter limbs may prefer to use them; give me for my instrument of progression the legs of the patient and sure-footed mule. They are better legs, at all events, than mine. I am seated on his back, the bridle lies knotted upon his neck—the cares of the way are all his—the toil and the anxiety of it; the scene is all mine, and I am all in it. I am seated there, all eye, all thought, gazing, musing; yet not without just sufficient occupation to keep it still a luxury—this leisure to contemplate. The mule takes care of himself, and, in so doing, of you too; yet not so entirely but that you must look a little after yourself. That he by no means has your safety for his primary object is evident from this, that, in turning sharp corners or traversing narrow paths, he never calculates whether there is sufficient room for any other legs than his own—takes no thought of yours. To keep your knees, in such places, from collision with huge boulders, or shattered stumps of trees, must be your own care; to say nothing of the occasional application of whip or stick, and a very strong pull at his mouth to raise his head from the grass which he has leisurely begun to crop. Seated thus upon your mule, given up to the scene, with something still of active life going on about you, with full liberty to pause and gaze, and dismount when you will, and at no time proceeding at a railroad speed, I do say—unless you are seated by your own incomparable Juliet, who has for the first time breathed that she loves you—I do say that you are in the most enviable position that the wide world affords. As for me, I have spent some days, some weeks, in this fashion amongst the mountains; they are the only days of my life I would wish to live over again. But mind, if you would really enjoy all this, go alone—a silent guide before or behind you. No friends, no companion, no gossip. You will find gossip enough in your inn, if you want it. If your guide thinks it is his duty to talk, to explain, to tell you the foolish names of things that need no name—make belief that you understand him not—that his language, be it French or German, is to you utterly incomprehensible.

I would not paint it all couleur de rose. The sun is not always shining.

There is tempest and foul weather, fatigue and cold, and abundant moisture to be occasionally encountered. There is something to endure. But if you prayed to Heaven for perpetual fair weather, and your prayer were granted, it would be the most unfortunate petition you could put up. Why, there are some of the sublimest aspects, the noblest moods and tempers of the great scene, which you would utterly forfeit by this miserable immunity. He who loves the mountain, will love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in driving mist or cloud that obscures every thing from view—to be made aware of the neighbouring precipice only by the sound of the torrent that rushes unseen beneath you—how low down you can only guess—this, too, has its excitement. Besides, while you are in this total blank, the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour from the scene around you, and leave the most glorious spectacle for some moments exposed to view. Nothing can exceed these moments of sudden and partial revelation. The glittering summits of the mountains appear as by enchantment where there had long been nothing but dense dark vapour. And how beautiful the wild disorder of the clouds, whose array has been broken up, and who are seen flying, huddled together in tumultuous retreat! But the veering wind rallies them again, and again they sweep back over the vast expanse, and hill and valley, earth and sky, are obliterated in a second.

He who would ponder what man is, should journey amongst the mountains. What men are, is best learnt in the city.

How, to a museful spirit, the heart and soul of man is reflected in the shows of nature! I cannot see this torrent battling for ever along its rocky path, and not animate it with human passions, and torture it with a human fate. Can it have so much turmoil and restlessness, and not be allied to humanity?

But all are not images of violence or lessons of despondency. Mark the Yungfrau, how she lifts her slight and virgin snows fearlessly to the blazing sun! She is so high, she feels no reflected heat.

How well the simple architecture of the low-roofed buildings of Switzerland accords with its magnificent scenery! What were lofty steeples beside Mont Blanc, or turreted castles beside her pinnacles of granite? Elsewhere, in the level plain, I love the cathedral. I had lately stood enraptured in the choir of that of Cologne, gazing up at those tall windows which spring where other loftiest buildings terminate—windows so high that God only can look in upon the worshipper.

But here—what need of the stately edifice, when there is a church whose buttresses are mountains, whose roof and towers are above the clouds, verily in the heavens? What need of artificial reminiscences of the Great King, here where he has built for himself? The plain, it is man's nature—given to man's wants; there stands his corn, there flow his milk and honey. But the mountain, it is God's nature—his stationary tabernacle—reserved for the eye only of man and the communing of his spirit. If meant to subserve the wants of his earthly nature, meant still more expressly to kindle other wants. Do they not indeed lead to Heaven, these mountains? At least I know they lead beyond this earth.

There is a little church stands in the valley of Chamouni. It was open, as is customary in Catholic countries, to receive the visits and the prayers of the faithful; but there was no service, no priest, nor indeed a single person in the building. It was evening—and a solitary lamp hung suspended from the ceiling, just before the altar. Allured by the mysterious appearance of this lamp burning in solitude, I entered, and remained in it some time, making out, in the dim light, the wondrous figures of virgins and saints generally found in such edifices. When I emerged from the church, there stood Mont Blanc before me, reflecting the last tints of the setting sun. I am habitually tolerant of Catholic devices and ceremonies; but at this moment how inexpressibly strange, how very little, how poor, contemptible, and like an infant's toy, seemed all the implements of worship I had just left!

And yet the tall, simple, wooden cross that stands in the open air on the platform before the church, this was well. This was a symbol that might well stand, even in the presence of Mont Blanc. Symbol of suffering and of love, where is it out of place? On no spot on earth, on no spot where a human heart is beating.

Mont Blanc and this wooden cross, are they not the two greatest symbols that the world can show? They are wisely placed opposite each other.

I have alluded to the sunset seen in this valley. All travellers love to talk a little of their own experience, their good or their ill fortune. The first evening I entered Chamouni, the clouds had gathered on the summits of the mountains, and a view of Mont Blanc was thought hopeless. Nevertheless I sallied forth, and planted myself in the valley, with a singular confidence in the goodness of nature towards one who was the humblest but one of the sincerest of her votaries. My confidence was rewarded. The clouds dispersed, and the roseate sunset on the mountain was seen to perfection. I had not yet learned to distinguish that summit which, in an especial manner, bears the name of Mont Blanc. There is a modesty in its greatness. It makes no ostentatious claim to be the highest in the range, and is content if for a time you give the glory of pre-eminence to others. But it reserves a convincing proof of its own superiority. I had been looking elsewhere, and in a wrong direction, for Mont Blanc, when I found that all the summits had sunk, like the clouds when day deserts them, into a cold dead white—all but one point, that still glowed with the radiance of the sun when all beside had lost it. There was the royal mountain.

What a cold, corpse-like hue it is which the snow-mountain assumes just after the sun has quitted it. There is a short interval then, when it seems the very image of death. But the moon rises, or the stars take up their place, and the mountain resumes its beauty and its life. Beauty is always life. Under the star-light how ethereal does it look!

In the landscapes of other countries, the house—the habitation of man—be it farm-house or cottage—gathers, so to speak, some of the country about itself—makes itself the centre of some circle, however small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet, which even in summer speaks so plainly of winter, and stands ever prepared with its low drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the wind—these dot the landscape most charmingly, but yet are lost in it; they form no group, no central point in the scene. I am thinking more particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. There is no path apparently between one and the other; the beautiful green verdure lies untrodden around them. One would say, the inhabitants found their way to them like birds to their nests. And like enough to nests they are, both in the elevation at which they are sometimes perched, and in the manner of their distribution over the scene.

However they got there, people at all events are living in them, and the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes. Those beautiful little tame cattle, with their short horns, and long ears, and mouse-coloured skin, with all the agility of a goat, and all the gentleness of domesticity—you meet them feeding in places where your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw, calling after them in that high sing-song note, which forms the basis of what is called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful, the voice is sustained and yet varied—being varied, it can be sustained the longer—and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an English drawing-room—may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss peasant chanting across the mountain defiles—may I often again halt to listen to it!

But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me—though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too much of that.

But no murmurs. We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad ocean—had we nothing else to boast of—can never feel deserted of nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours—the dim religious light of our vesper skies—I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime.