nt 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