ved by the lake, and their
upper confounded with the rugged faces of the mountains. Beyond the limits
of the Leman, the Alps shot up into still higher pinnacles, occasionally
showing one of those naked excrescences of granite, which rise for a
thousand feet above the rest of the range--a trifle in the stupendous
scale of the vast piles--and which, in the language of the country are not
inaptly termed Dents, from some fancied and plausible resemblance to
human teeth. The verdant meadows of Noville, Aigle and Bex. spread for
leagues between these snow-capped barriers, so dwindled to the eye,
however, that the spectator believed that to be a mere bottom, which was,
in truth, a broad and fertile plain. Beyond these again, came the
celebrated pass of St. Maurice, where the foaming Rhone dashed between two
abutments of rock, as if anxious to effect its exit before the
superincumbent mountains could come together, and shut it out for ever
from the inviting basin to which it was hurrying with a never-ceasing din.
Behind this gorge, so celebrated as the key of the Valais, and even of the
Alps in the time of the conquerors of the world, the back-ground took a
character of holy mystery. The shades of evening lay thick in that
enormous glen, which was sufficiently large to contain a sovereign state,
and the dark piles of mountains beyond were seen in a hazy, confused
array. The setting was a grey boundary of rocks, on which fleecy clouds
rested, as if tired with their long and high flight, and on which the
parting day still lingered soft and lucid. One cone of dazzling white
towered over all. It resembled a bright stepping-stone between heaven and
earth, the heat of the hot sun falling innocuously against its sides, like
the cold and pure breast of a virgin repelling those treacherous
sentiments which prove the ruin of a shining and glorious innocence.
Across the summit of this brilliant and cloud-like peak, which formed the
most distant object in the view, ran the imaginary line that divided Italy
from the regions of the north. Drawing nearer, and holding its course on
the opposite shore, the eye embraced the range of rampart-like rocks that
beetle over Villeneuve and Chillon, the latter a snow-white pile that
seemed to rest partly on the land and partly, on the water. On the vast
debris of the mountains clustered the hamlets of Clarens, Montreux,
Chatelard, and all those other places, since rendered so familiar to the
reader of fic