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sound, as if an unearthly flag was shaking its invisible folds in the air. The enormous tract of country over which your view extends-most of it dim and almost dissolved into air by distance-intensifies the strange influence of the silence. You feel the force of the line I have just quoted from Wordsworth,—

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

None of the travellers whom you can see crawling at your feet have the least conception of what is meant by the silent solitudes of the High Alps. To you, it is like a return to the stir of active life when, after hours of wandering, you return to hear the tinkling of the cowbells below; to them the same sound is the ultimate limit of the habitable world.

Whilst your mind is properly toned by these influences, you become conscious of another fact, to which the common variety of tourists is necessarily insensible. You begin to find out for the first time what the mountains really are. On one side, you look back upon the "urns of the silent snow," upon the huge reservoirs from which the Oberland glaciers descend. You see the vast stores from which the great rivers of Europe are replenished, and the monstrous crawling masses that are carving the mountains into shape, and the gigantic bulwarks that separate two great quarters of the world. From below these wild regions are half invisible; they are masked by the outer line of mountains; and it is not till you are able to command them from some lofty point that you can appreciate the grandeur of the huge barriers and the snow that is piled within their folds. There is another half of the view equally striking. Looking towards the north, the whole of Switzerland is couched at your feet; the Jura and the Black Forest lie on the far horizon. And then you know what is the nature of a really mountainous country. From below everything is seen in a kind of distorted perspective. The people of the valley naturally think that the valley is everything that the country resembles oldfashioned maps, where a few sporadic lumps are distributed amongst towns and plains. The true proportions reveal themselves as you ascend. The valleys, you can now see, are nothing but narrow trenches scooped out amidst a tossing waste of mountain, just to carry off the drainage. The great ridges run hither and thither, having it all their own way, and wild and untameable regions of rock or open grass or forest, at whose feet the valleys exist on sufferance. Creeping about amongst the roots of the hills, you half miss the hills themselves; you quite fail to understand the massiveness of the mountain chains, and, therefore, the wonderful energy of the forces that have heaved the surface of the world into these distorted shapes. And it is to a half-conscious sense of the powers that must have been at work that a great part of the influence of mountain scenery is due. Geologists tell us that a theory of catastrophes is unphilosophical; but whatever may be the scientific truth, our minds are impressed as though we were witnessing the results of some incredible convulsion. At Stonehenge, we ask what human beings could have

erected these strange grey monuments, and in the mountains we instinetively ask what force can have carved out the Matterhorn and placed the Wetterhorn on its gigantic pedestal. Now, it is not till we reach some commanding point that we realize the amazing extent of country over which the solid ground has been shaking and heaving itself in irresistible tumult.

Something, it is true, of this last effect may be seen from such mountains as the Rigi or the Faulhorn. There, too, one seems to be at the centre of a vast sphere, the earth bending up in Alp-like form to meet the sky, and the blue vault above stretching in an arch majestical by its enormous extent. There you seem to see a sensible fraction of the world at your feet. But the effect is far less striking when other mountains obviously look down upon you, when, as it were, you are looking at the waves of the great ocean of hills merely from the crest of one of the waves themselves, and not from some lighthouse that rises far over their heads; for the Wetterhorn, like the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, owes one great beauty to the fact that it is on the edge of the lower country, and stands between the real giants and the crowd of inferior, though still enormous, masses in attendance upon them. And, in the next place, your mind is far better adapted to receive impressions of sublimity when you are alone, in a silent region, with a black sky above and giant cliffs all round, with a sense still in your mind, if not of actual danger, still of danger that would become real with the slightest relaxation of caution, and with the world divided from you by hours of snow and rock.

I will go no further, not because I have no more to say, but because descriptions of scenery soon become wearisome, and because I have, I hope, said enough to show that the mountaineer may boast of some intellectual pleasures; that he is not a mere scrambler, but that he looks for poetical impressions, as well as for such small glory as his achievements may gain in a very small circle. Something of what he gains fortunately sticks by him he does not quite forget the mountain language; his eye still recognizes the space and the height and the glory of the lofty mountains. And yet there is some pain in wandering ghostlike among the scenes of his earlier pleasures. For my part, I try in vain to hug myself in a sense of comfort; I turn over in bed when I hear the stamping of heavily-nailed shoes along the passage of an inn about two A.M. I feel the skin of my nose complacently when I see others returning with a glistening tight aspect about that unluckily prominent feature, and know that in a day or two they will be raw and blistered and burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the miseries of those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or on hard boards of châlets, at once cold and stiffy and haunted by innumerable fleas. I congratulate myself on having a whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small danger of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet I secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is little use to avoid early rising and discomfort and even fleas, if he also loses the pleasures to which they

were the sauce, rather too piquante a sauce occasionally, it must be admitted. The philosophy is all very well which recommends moderate enjoyment, regular exercise, and a careful avoidance of risk and overexcitement. That is, it is all very well so long as risk and excitement and immoderate enjoyment are out of your power; but it does not stand the test of looking on and seeing them just beyond your reach. In time, no doubt, a man may grow calm; he may learn to enjoy the pleasures and the exquisite beauties of the lower regions, though they, too, are most fully enjoyed when they have a contrast with beauties of a different and pleasures of a keener excitement. When first debarred, at any rate, one feels like a balloon full of gas, and fixed by immovable ropes to the prosaic ground. It is pleasant to lie on one's back in a bed of rhododendrons, and look up to a mountain top peering at one from above a bank of cloud; but it is pleasantest when one has qualified oneself for repose by climbing the peak the day before and becoming familiar with its terrors and its beauties. In time, doubtless, one may get reconciled to anything; one may settle down to be a caterpillar, even after one has known the pleasures of being a butterfly; one may become philosophical, and have one's clothes let out; and even in time, perhaps, though it is almost too terrible to contemplate, be content with a mule or a carriage, or that lowest depth to which human beings can sink, and for which the English language happily affords no name, a chaise à porteurs: and even in such degradation the memory of better times may be pleasant; for I doubt much whether it is truth the poet sings,—

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. Certainly to a philosophical mind the sentiment is doubtful. For my part, the fate which has cut me off, if I may use the expression, in the flower of my youth, and doomed me to be a non-climbing animal in future, is one which ought to exclude grumbling. I cannot indicate it more plainly, for I might so make even the grumbling in which I have already indulged look like a sin. I can only say that there are some very delightful things in which it is possible to discover an infinitesimal drop of bitterness, and that the mountaineer who undertakes to cut himself off from his favourite pastime, even for reasons which he will admit in his wildest moods to be more than amply sufficient, must expect at times to feel certain pangs of regret, however quickly they may be smothered.

Shooting-Stars, Meteors, and Aerolites.

ON a calm, clear night, when

All the stars

Shine, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest,

the contemplation of the celestial vault raises in the least thoughtful mind vague suggestions of infinity, eternity, and omnipotence. A knowledge of the wonders which have been revealed by modern astronomical investigations, largely enhances these emotions. Looking into the starlit depths of heaven, the astronomer knows that the objects presented to him shine from distances so great, that not only are they inconceivable themselves, but that the very unit by which he attempts to gauge them is inconceivable. He knows that what he sees is not that which is, but that which was,—years ago as respects the nearer parts of the heaven-scape, but long ages ago, he doubts not, as respects faintly shining stars visible only by momentary scintillations. He has good reasons, indeed, for surmising that the diffused illumination, which, on the darkest night lights up the background of the view, had been travelling towards the earth myriads of ages before she had assumed her present state, or had been inhabited by the races now subsisting upon her surface. So long, he believes, has light, which would eight times girdle the earth in a second, been occupied in journeying towards us from the depths into which he is gazing. Thus the same view exhibits to him eternity of time and infinity of space. He sees also omnipotence in the operation of those laws-the impress of the Almighty mind-under whose action all that he sees is undergoing a process of change, vast, resistless, unending, yet so solemn in its grand progress that man knows no apter type for immutability.

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To an observer impressed with these emotions, the contrast is startling when there is a sudden exhibition of life and motion in the calm realms of night. We cannot, however, look for any long interval of time towards any quarter of the sky, without perceiving indications more or less distinct of objects other than the fixed stars. Now on one side, now on another we seem to catch momentary glimpses of moving light, disappearing too rapidly to be detected. But before many minutes have elapsed we receive less doubtful evidence. There sweeps silently and swiftly across the starlit depths a palely gleaming light, which disappears after traversing an arc of greater or less extent. We know not how it may be with others, but to ourselves the impression conveyed by the apparition of a shootingstar, is that no apter emblem can be conceived of the finite and the

feeble.* The suddenness with which these objects appear, their hasty movements, and their short duration, alike conduce to render as marked as possible the contrast they present to the fixed stars.

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But though shooting-stars are short-lived, and apparently insignificant, yet we shall presently see that the relations they present to other celestial objects are not unimportant. We are brought by means of them into contact, so to speak, with external space. "Accustomed to know nontelluric bodies solely by measurement, by calculation, and by the inferences of our reason," writes Humboldt, "it is with a kind of astonishment that we touch, weigh, and submit to chemical analysis, metallic and earthy masses appertaining to the world without." The vulgar sense sees, in shooting-stars, nothing but "dying sparks in the clear vault of heaven; the reflecting mind will find much to arouse interest, and much that is worthy of close study and investigation.

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We proceed to present the results of observations-(i.) casual and (ii.) particular-which have been made on shooting-stars, meteors, and aerolites.

A careful observer directing his attention towards any quarter of the sky on a clear night, will see on an average six shooting-stars per hour. We may assume therefore that about fifteen appear above the horizon of any place during each hour. More appear after than before midnight, the most favourable time for observation being from one o'clock to three. In tropical climates shooting-stars are seen oftener, and shine far more brilliantly than in our northern climates. This peculiarity is due no doubt to the superior purity and serenity of the air within and near the tropics, not to any real superiority in the number of falling-stars. Sir Alexander Burnes, speaking of the transparency of the dry atmosphere of Bokhara, a place not farther south than Madrid, but raised 1,200 feet above the sea-level, says "The stars have uncommon lustre, and the Milky Way shines gloriously in the firmament. There is also a never-ceasing display of the most brilliant meteors, which dart like rockets in the sky; ten or twelve of them are sometimes seen in an hour, assuming every colour; fiery-red, blue, pale, and faint." In our climate about two-thirds of all the shooting-stars seen are white; next in frequency come yellow stars, one yellow star being seen for about five white stars; there are about twice as many yellow as orange stars, and more than twice as many orange as green or blue stars.

Meteors or fire-balls are far less common than shooting-stars. They are magnificent objects, their brilliancy often exceeding that of the full

moon.

Some, even, have been so brilliant as to cast a shadow in full daylight. They are generally followed by a brilliant luminous train,

"The spinstress Werpeja," says a Lithuanian myth, "spins the thread of the new-born child, and each thread ends in a star. When death approaches, the thread breaks, and the star falls, quenching its light, to the earth."-Grimm: Deutsche Mythologie.

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