light; meadows shorn like lawns, scattered
over its broad breast; woods of larches, to cast their gloom athwart the
glades and to deepen the shadows; brown chalets that seemed to rise out
of the sward, at the bidding of the eye; and here and there a cottage
poised on a giddy height, with a chapel or two to throw a religious calm
over all! There was nothing ambitious in this view, which was rural in
every feature, but it was the very _bean ideal_ of rustic beauty, and
without a single visible blemish to weaken its effect. It was some such
picture of natural objects as is formed of love by a confiding and
ingenuous youth of fifteen.

We passed the night in the _drum_ of Lungern, and found it raining hard
when we rose the following morning. The water soon ceased to fall in
torrents, however, changing to a drizzle, at which time the valley,
clouded in mists in constant motion, was even more beautiful than ever.
So perfect, were the accessories, so minute was everything rendered by
the mighty scale, so even was the grass and so pure the verdure that
bits of the mountain pasturages, or Alps, coming into view through the
openings in the vapour, appeared like highly-finished Flemish paintings;
and this the more so, because all the grouping of objects, the chalets,
cottages, &c. were exactly those that the artist would seize upon to
embellish his own work. Indeed, we have daily, hourly, occasions to
observe how largely the dealers in the picturesque have drawn upon the
resources of this extraordinary country, whether the pallet, or poetry
in some other form, has been the medium of conveying pleasure.

The _garcon_ of the inn pointed to some mist that was rolling along a
particular mountain, and said it was the infallible barometer of
Lungern. We might be certain of getting fair weather within an hour. A
real barometer corroborated the testimony of the mist, but the change
was slower than had been predicted; and we began to tire of so glorious
a picture, under an impatience to proceed, for one does not like to
swallow pleasure even, perforce.

At ten we were able to quit the inn, one half of the party taking the
bridle-path, attended by two horse-keepers, while the rest of us,
choosing to use our own limbs, were led by the guide up the mountains by
a shorter cut, on foot. The view from the Brunig was not as fine as I
had round it in 1828, perhaps because I was then taken completely by
surprise, and perhaps because ignorance of