glacier here was quite visible, the dwindling of the wrinkles into bands, and the subdivision of these bands into lines which mark the edges of the laminæ of which the glacier at this place is made up. Beyond, amid the mountains at the opposite side of the Rhone valley, lay the Gries glacier, half its snow in shadow, and half illuminated by the sinking sun. Round farther to the right were the Monte Leone and other grand masses, the grandest here being the Mischabel with its crowd of snowy cones. Jumping a gap in the mountains, we hit the stupendous cone of the Weisshorn, which slopes. to meet the inclines of the Mischabel, and in the wedge of space carved out between the two the Matterhorn lifts its terrible head.

Wheeling farther in the same direction, we at length strike the mighty spurs of the Finsteraarhorn, between two of which lies the Oberaar glacier. Here is no turmoil of crevasses, no fantastic ice-pinnacles, nothing to indicate the operation of those tremendous forces by which a glacier sometimes rends its own breast. The grimmest giant of the Oberland closes the view at the head of the Lauteraar glacier-the Schreckhorn, whose cliffs on this side no mountaineer will ever scale. Between the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn a curious group of peaks encircle a flat snow-field, from which the sunbeams are flung in blazing lines. Immediately

below is the Unteraar glacier, with a long black streak upon its back, bent hither and thither, like a serpent wriggling down the valley. Beyond it and flanking it is a ridge of mountains with a crest of vertical rock, hacked into indentations which suggest a resemblance to a cock's comb. To the very root of the comb the mountains have been planed by the ancient ice.

A scene of unspeakable desolation it must have been when not Switzerland alone, but all Europe, was thus encased in frozen armour-when a glacier from Ben Nevis dammed the mouth of Glenroy, and Llanberis and Borrodale were ploughed by frozen shares sent down by Snowdon and Scawfell—when from the Reeks of Magillicuddy came the navigators which dug out space for the Killarney lakes, and carved through the mountains the Gap of Dunloe.' Evening came, and I moved downwards, over heaped boulders and tufted alp; down with headlong speed over the rounded rocks of the Grimsel, making long springs at intervals, over the polished inclines, and reaching the hospice as the bell rings its inmates to their evening meal.

On Saturday I ascended from Viesch to the Hotel Jungfrau on the slope of the Æggischhorn, and in the evening walked up to the summit of the mountain alone. As usual, I wandered unconsciously

See chapter on Killarney,' p. 413.

6

from the beaten track, getting into a chaos of crags which had been shaken from the heights. My ascent was quick, and I soon found myself upon the crest of broken rocks which caps the mountain. The peak and those adjacent, which are similarly shattered, exhibit a striking picture of the ruin which nature inflicts upon her own creations. She buildeth up and taketh down. She lifts the mountains by her subterranean energies, and then blasts them by her lightnings and her frost. Thus grandly she rushes along the grooves of change' to her unattainable repose. Is it unattainable? The incessant tendency of material forces is toward final equilibrium; and if the quantity of this tendency be finite, a time of repose must come at last. If one portion of the universe be hotter than another, a flux instantly sets in to equalise the temperatures; while winds blow and rivers roll in search of a stable equilibrium. Matter longs for rest; when is this longing to be fully satisfied? If satisfied, what then? Rest is not perfection; it is death. Life is only compatible with mutation; when equilibrium sets in life ceases, and the world thenceforward is locked in everlasting sleep.

A wooden cross bleached by many storms surmounts the pinnacle of the Æggischhorn, and at the base of it I now take my place and scan the surrounding scene. Down from its birthplace in

the mountains comes that noblest of ice-streams the Great Aletsch glacier. Its arms are thrown round the shoulders of the Jungfrau, while from the Monk and the Trugberg, the Gletscherhorn, the Breithorn, the Aletschhorn, and many another noble pile, the tributary snows descend and thicken into ice. The mountains are well protected by their wintry coats, and hence the quantity of débris upon the glacier is comparatively small; still, along it can be noticed dark longitudinal streaks, which are incipient moraines. Right and left from these longitudinal bands sweep finer curves, twisted here and there into complex windings, which mark the lamination of the subjacent ice. The glacier lies in a curved valley, the side towards which its convex curvature is turned is thrown into a state of strain, the ice breaks across the line of tension, a curious system of oblique glacier ravines being thus produced. From the snow-line which crosses the glacier above the Faulberg a pure snow-field stretches upward to the Col de la Jungfrau, which unites the Maiden to the Monk. Skies and summits are to-day without a cloud, and no mist or turbidity interferes with the sharpness of the outlines. Jungfrau, Monk, Eiger, Trugberg, cliffy Strahlgrat, stately, lady-like Aletschhorn, all grandly pierce the empyrean. Like a Saul of mountains, the Finsteraarhorn overtops all his neighbours; then we have the Oberaarhorn, with the riven

glacier of Viesch rolling from his shoulders. Below is the Märjelin See, with its crystal precipices and its floating icebergs, snowy white, sailing on a bluegreen sea. Beyond is the range which divides the Valais from Italy. Sweeping round, the vision meets an aggregate of peaks which look, as fledglings to their mother, towards the mighty Dom. Then come the repellent crags of Mont Cervin, the idea of moral savagery, of wild untameable ferocity, mingling involuntarily with our contemplation of the gloomy pile. Next comes an object scarcely less grand, conveying it may be even a deeper impression of majesty and might than the Matterhorn itself— the Weisshorn, perhaps the most splendid object in the Alps. But beauty is associated with its force, and we think of it, not as cruel, but as grand and strong. Further to the right is the Great Combin; other peaks crowd around him, while at the extremity of the curve round which the gaze has swept rises the sovran crown of Mont Blanc. And now, as the day sinks, scrolls of pearly clouds form around the mountain-crests, and are wafted from them into the distant air. They are without colour of any kind; but their grace of form and lustre are not to be described.