take.

You shall have facts as well as reflections,-incidents as well as disquisitions. I shall be grave,—as who would not at the sight of fallen nations?—but "when time shall serve there shall be smiles." You shall climb the Alps; and when their tops begin to burn at sunrise, you shall join heart and song with the music of the shepherd's horn, and the thunder of a thousand torrents, as they rush headlong down amid crags and pine-forests from the icy summits. You shall enter, with pilgrim feet, the gates of proud capitals, where puissant kings once reigned, but have passed away, and have left no memorial on earth, save a handful of dust in a stone-coffin, or a half-legible name on some mouldering arch. The solemn and stirring voice of Monte Viso, speaking from the midst of the Cottian Alps, will call you from afar to the martyr-land of Europe. You shall worship with the Waldenses beneath their own Casteluzzo, which covers with its mighty shadow the ashes of their martyred forefathers, and the humble sanctuary of their living descendants. You shall count the towns and campaniles on the broad Lombardy. You shall pass glorious days on the top of renowned cathedrals, and sit and muse in the face of the eternal Alps, as the clouds now veil, now reveal, their never-trodden snows. You shall cross the Lagunes, and see the winged lion of St Mark soaring serenely amid the bright domes and the ever calm seas of Venice, where you may list

"The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

Mellowed by distance, o'er the waters sweep."

You shall travel long sleepless nights in the diligence, and be ferried at day-break over "ancient rivers." You shall tread the grass-grown streets of Ferrara, and the deserted halls of Bologna, where the wisdom-loving youth of Europe erst assembled, but whose solitude now is undisturbed, save by the

clank of the Croat's sabre, or the wine-fl You shall visit cells dim and dank, around thrown a halo which draws thither the p rather muse in the twilight of the naked amid the marble glories of the palace that neighbourhood. You shall go with me, at t to aisled cathedrals, which were ages a-buil tion of which swallowed up the revenues of p whose roof, ample enough to cover thou thousands, you may see a solitary priest, dirge over a "Religion" fallen as a domin isting only as a military organization; w and solemn, of mailed warriors, grim saints. cherubs, ranged along the walls, are the the surpliced man, if we except a few beg naked knees the stony floor. You shall se "The brightest star of star-bright

You shall be stirred by the craggy grandeu and soothed by the living green of the Tusc hoar castles, their olives, their dark cypre rests,

"Where beside his leafy h

The sullen boar hath heard the distan
And whets his tusks against the gnarl

You shall taste the vine of Italy, and d the Arno. You shall wander over ancie counter the fierce Apennine blast, and be diterranean wave, which the sirocco he dark, and pours in a foaming cataract Italy. Finally, we shall tread together on which Rome sits, with the leaves of the fragments of her shivered sceptre s

waiting with discrowned and downcast head the bolt of doom. Entering the gates of the "seven-hilled city," we shall climb the Capitol, and survey a scene which has its equal nowhere on the earth. Mouldering arches, fallen columns, buried palaces, empty tombs, and slaves treading on the dust of the conquerors of the world, are all that now remain of Imperial Rome. What a scene of ruin and woe! When the twilight falls, and the moon begins to climb the eastern arch, mark how the Coliseum projects, as if in pity, its mighty shadow across the Forum, and covers with its kindly folds the mouldering trophies of the past, and draws its mantle around the nakedness of the Cæsars' palace, as if to screen it from the too curious eye of the visitor. Rome, what a history is thine! One other tragedy, terrible as befits the drama it closes, and the curtain will drop in solemn, and, it may be, eternal silence.

CHAPTER II.

THE PASSAGE OF THE ALPS

The Rhone-Plains of Dauphiny-Mont Blanc and scape by Night-Democratic Club in the Diligence -Festooned Vines-Begin the Ascent-Chamberr Alpine Valley-Sudden Alternations of Beauty an lers-Evening-Grandeur of Sun-set-Supper at the Summit at Midnight-Morning-Sunrise amon -Italy.

It was wearing late on an evening of early Od I crossed the Rhone on my way to the Alps. heavily during the day, and sombre clouds s towers of Lyons behind me. The river was lamps on the bridge threw a troubled gleam u ous current as it rolled underneath. It was i recollect that this was the stream on the Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, himself the had, at almost the identical spot where I cros and prayed, and into the floods of which had ashes of the first martyrs of Gaul. These mur no very auspicious commencement of my journ rished the hope that to-morrow would bring fa with fair weather would come the green valleys

tops of the Alps, and, the day after, the sunny plains of Italy. This fair vision beckoned me on through the deep road and the scudding shower.

We struck away into the plains of Dauphiny,-those great plains that stretch from the Rhone to the Alps, and which offer to the eye, as seen from the heights that overhang Lyons, a vast and varied expanse of wood and meadow, cornfield and vineyard, city and hamlet, with the snowy pile of Mont Blanc rising afar in the horizon. On the previous evening I had climbed these heights, so stately and beautiful, with convents hanging on their sides, and a chapel to Mary crowning their summit, to renew my acquaintance, after an interval of some years' absence, with the monarch of the Alps. I was greatly pleased to find, especially in these times, that my old friend had not grown "red." Since I saw him last, changes not a few had passed upon Europe, and more than one monarch had fallen; but Mont Blanc sat firmly in his seat, and wore his icy crown as proudly as ever.

Since my former visit to Lyons the "Reds" had made great progress in all the countries at the foot of the Alps. Their party had been especially progressive in Lyons; so much so as to affect the nomenclature of the hills that overlook that city on the north. That hill, which is nearly wholly covered with the houses and workshops of the silk-weavers, is now known as the "red mountain," its inhabitants being mostly of that faction; while the hill on the west of it, that, namely, which I had ascended on the evening before, and which is chiefly devoted to ecclesiastical persons and uses, is called the "white mountain." But while men had been changing their faith, and hills their names, Mont Blanc stood firmly by his old creed and his old colours. There he was, dazzlingly, transcendently white, defying the fuller's art to whiten him,