note is, that the character of the scene
which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is
not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was
not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though
these were all peculiarly their possessions--that the three venerable
cantons received their name. They were not called the States of the
Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the _Forest_. And
the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the
spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the
'Hill of Angels,' has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name
of 'Under the Woods.'

And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in
Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman
row southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri. Steepest
there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.
Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the
lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable
falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices
of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time the beat
of a wave, slow lifted where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies
heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep
grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn
glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of
twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the
shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.

49. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the
Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of
thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian
aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches, like the bridge of
Chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm
swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of
Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure
streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing
through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure,
half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky
slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage,
whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand
evergreens, were penetrate