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 broa