ft the grosser forms of monks and bishops far
beneath, and was surrounded--as became my aerial position--with winged
cherubs, newly alighted, as it seemed, on the spires and turrets which
shot up like a forest at my feet. Here I waited the coming of the Alps,
with all the impatience with which an audience at the theatre waits the
rising of the curtain.

Meanwhile, till it should please Monte Rosa and her long train of
white-robed companions to emerge, I had the city spectacles to amuse me.
There was Milan at my feet. I could count its every house, and trace the
windings of its every street and lane, as easily as though it had been
laid down upon a map. I could see innumerable black dots moving about in
the streets,--mingling, crossing, gathering in little knots, then
dissolving, and the constituent atoms falling into the stream, and
floating away. Then there came a long white line with nodding plumes;
and I could faintly hear the tramp of horses; and then there followed a
mustering of men and a flashing of bayonets in the square below. I sat
watching the manoeuvres of the little army beneath for an hour or so,
while drum and clarionet did their best to fill the square with music,
and send up their thousand echoes to break and die amid the spires and
statues of the Cathedral. At last the mimic war was ended, and I was
left alone, with the silent and moveless, but ever acting statues around
and below me. What a picture, thought I, of the pageantry of life, as
viewed from a higher point than this world! Instead of an hour, take a
thousand years, and how do the scenes shift! The golden spectacle of
empire has moved westward from the banks of the Euphrates to those of
the Tiber and the Thames. You can trace its track by the ruins it has
left. The field has been illuminated this hour by the gleam of arts and
empire, and buried in the darkness of barbarism the next. Man has been
ever busy. He has builded cities, fought battles, set up thrones,
constructed systems. There has been much toil and confusion, but, alas!
little progress. Such would be the sigh which some superior being from
some tranquil station on high would heave over the ceaseless struggle
and change in the valley of the world. And yet, amid all its changes,
great principles have been taking root, and a noble edifice has been
emerging.

But, lo! the mists are rising, and yonder are the Alps. Now that the
curtain is rent, one flashing peak bursts upon you after an