German artist who has migrated southward; but the reverse
migration was equally common.

Being in the neighbourhood, and wishing to assure myself whether the
sculptor of the Saas-Fee chapels had or had not come lower down the
valley, I examined every church and village which I could hear of as
containing anything that might throw light on this point. I was thus led
to Vispertimenen, a village some three hours above either Visp or
Stalden. It stands very high, and is an almost untouched example of a
medieval village. The altar-piece of the main church is even more
floridly ambitious in its abundance of carving and gilding than the many
other ambitious altar-pieces with which the Canton Valais abounds. The
Apostles are receiving the Holy Ghost on the first storey of the
composition, and they certainly are receiving it with an overjoyed
alacrity and hilarious ecstasy of _allegria spirituale_ which it would
not be easy to surpass. Above the village, reaching almost to the limits
beyond which there is no cultivation, there stands a series of chapels
like those I have been describing at Saas-Fee, only much larger and more
ambitious. They are twelve in number, including the church that crowns
the series. The figures they contain are of wood (so I was assured, but
I did not go inside the chapels): they are life-size, and in some chapels
there are as many as a dozen figures. I should think they belonged to
the later half of the last century, and here, one would say, sculpture
touches the ground; at least, it is not easy to see how cheap
exaggeration can sink an art more deeply. The only things that at all
pleased me were a smiling donkey and an ecstatic cow in the Nativity
chapel. Those who are not allured by the prospect of seeing perhaps the
very worst that can be done in its own line, need not be at the pains of
climbing up to Vispertimenen. Those, on the other hand, who may find
this sufficient inducement will not be disappointed, and they will enjoy
magnificent views of the Weisshorn and the mountains near the Dom.

I have already referred to the triptych at Gliss. This is figured in
Wolf's work on Chamonix and the Canton Valais, but a larger and clearer
reproduction of such an extraordinary work is greatly to be desired. The
small wooden statues above the triptych, as also those above its modern
companion in the south transept, are not less admirable than the triptych
itself. I know of no other like work in w