under our feet pinnacles on which we have always hitherto gazed upwards with admiration and awe; to trace the ice-stream from its very birthplace in the mountain-cleft to its point of dissolution amongst the warm verdure of the valleys; to have eternally sterile rocks and unchanging snows for our foreground, while shelter and cultivation and all the works of man are removed to a distance which feels unapproachable though clearly discerned; to see at a glance, all round the most stupendous barriers of Nature, and be present, as it were, at the same moment in two different valleys, leagues apart, which belong to different kingdoms, where different languages are spoken, and whose waters flow into different seas, such novelty of combination among familiar elements excites the imagination, and gives rise to that feeling of admiring surprise which persons possessing the smallest share of the poetic temperament have usually felt in such situations. To these pleasurable and ennobling sensations we must add the physical exhilaration which commonly attends all ascents not pushed to the extremest limit which occurs in the mountains of Europe. At all elevations of from 6000 to 11,000 feet, and not unfrequently for even 2000 feet more, the pedestrian enjoys a pleasurable feeling imparted by the consciousness of existence, similar to that which is described as so fascinating by those who have become familiar with the desert life of the East. The body seems lighter, the nervous power greater, the appetite is increased, and fatigue, though felt for a time, is removed by the shortest repose. Some travellers have described the sensation by the impression that they do not actually press the ground, but that the blade of a knife could be inserted between the sole of the foot and the mountain top. Such, then, appear to us to be the elements of the enjoyment attending the ascent of mountains made under propitious circumstances. There is, first, the thorough comprehension of a complex idea previously partially received; then there is the charm of novelty in the unwonted combination of objects more or less familiar; and lastly, there is consciousness of physical exhilaration. As one or other of these elements predominates, the resulting emotion will affect the Analytical, the Poetical, or the Sensuous faculties; and we cease to feel surprise that persons of the most varied temperament discover alike in such scenes a peculiar charm, described by some one as 'beyond and without a name,' and which is more or less intensely felt as one or more of these sensibilities are called forth. Fortunately these rewards of toil and perseverance are not peculiar to the accomplishment of the highest and most admired feats feats of pedestrian achievement. We imagine that even the most successful Alpine travellers will, if disposed to be candid, admit that the happiest, if not the proudest, moments of their experience have been spent on some of the more majestic passes of the Alps, or on some summit not of the very highest class. In such situations a favourable concurrence of circumstances is less improbable; there has been no exhaustion from previous preparation and anxiety, the atmosphere is often serene and delightful, the earlier hour at which the station may be attained increases the chances of a noble prospect, and even the prospect is itself more noble if every snowy peak has not been already sunk beneath the feet of the spectator; if the view, in short, combine the range and precision of the eagle's out-look with the contemplation of still higher summits, which preserve the grandeur of an ascending perspective with the detail of rough-hewn masses of granite and sparkling diadems of snow brought into illusory proximity by the transparency of the upper air. On the whole, without dissuading our energetic travellers from attempting even the most difficult feats of pedestrian attainment if occasion invites, and a natural taste deliberately prompts to them, we advise that they be made rare, not essential parts of Alpine journeys; especially they ought not to be the employment of a first or second tour. Habits of observation should be formed in the more accessible parts of Switzerland, for it is only after a time that the majesty of the upper world can be fully understood. The most trodden passes of the Alps, and their most frequented stations, are, in their way, as admirable as any other. He who is insensible to the greatness of the scenery of the Montanvert, the Wengern Alp, and the Cramont, need scarcely go in quest of the sublime to the Jardin, the Col du Géant, or the Stelvio; still less need he brave the difficulties of Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa. A tour composed of great ascents would be like a dinner consisting entirely of stimulants. The well known but never obsolete tours, of which Mr. Murray's work contains a judicious selection, must be the solid fare upon which the aspirant to a just appreciation of the Alps should be content to satisfy the ordinary demands of a healthful appetite for scenery. A common fault with our young tourists is to attempt too much in one season. A limited district well explored yields pleasanter recollections afterwards than a surfeit of marvels crammed into the compass of a summer excursion. And it would add much to the enjoyment and utility of such tours if a somewhat greater acquaintance were attained in the rudiments of Physical Geography than is commonly to be found even among our more highly educated classes. ART. ART. II.-1. Dred. A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1856. 2. American Slavery. A reprint of an Article on Uncle Tom's Cabin, and of Mr. Sumner's Speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856; with a notice of the events which followed that speech. 8vo. London, 1856. IF 6 F Mrs. Stowe wrote for fame only, she would have been satisfied with the success of Uncle Tom,' and would not have risked her popularity by another negro-slave story. We believe that we owe Dred' to a better motive, and that the highest literary reputation, or even the ovation which greeted Mrs. Stowe on her first visit to England, would all have been frankly risked for the great cause to which she devotes herself. 'Dred,' if it cannot add to the author's fame, is yet another and a striking picture of the evils of negro slavery, with this difference, that, while Uncle Tom' represents those horrors suffered by the slave, Dred' delineates the moral degradation, the bad feeling, the state of alarm and of civil conflict, the poverty and the misery of the master. We are reluctantly forced to believe that the most revolting characters in Dred,' such as Tom Gordon, hateful and repulsive as he is, cannot be rare in the Slave States, because the education and the influences which surround a Carolina planter from his childhood to his manhood all tend to produce just such an unmitigated ruffian. From infancy his mind is never controlled, and his bad passions are pampered and forced forward by interested flattery and by abject subservience. Young massa, as soon as he can totter about, is taught to wield a plaything whip, and to domineer over his 'nigger' playfellows and attendants. His first lessons make him believe that he is the irresponsible master of everybody and everything, that his will is law, and that the world was made for his pleasure. As he grows older he is sent to a private school, and learns to read and write, and calculate in dollars and cents; and having acquired this knowledge, all further education is considered unnecessary. He receives none of the wholesome discipline of a public school, or the corrective association of a university, and returns to the paternal plantation just as his worst passions are developed, to assist or to succeed his father in the exercise of absolute power. Is it likely that he can escape becoming such a creature as Mrs. Stowe has painted him?-ready to draw his bowie-knife and fire his revolver on his equals, or to abuse to the utmost the power which he has over his slaves? Every newspaper which reaches us from America shows that this is the state of society in the Southern States-the outrage on Mr. Sumner, the civil war and murders in Kansas, are now historical facts. Law, order, and good government are put aside, and ruffianism and Lynch-law predominate in their stead. It is true that the evil of slavery has existed more or less since the earliest traditions of the world, but religion and civilisation have ever mitigated its worst evils: the serf has always been gradually educated and civilised, till his transition to a state of freedom was almost imperceptible; the process was slow but progressive, and hope was never extinguished. In the United States the distinctions of race and colour have raised an insurmountable barrier to this only safe road to emancipation. It is the peculiarity of Anglo-American slavery that it is hopeless, and, as far as human laws can make it so, perpetual. Voluntary emancipation is so fettered by restrictions as to be almost impossible. Slave education is forbidden by penal enactments, and even Christianity is discouraged. Such a social condition is far worse than that which existed in our West Indian colonies before the great act of emancipation. There human stock was never bred and trained for the market, no internal slave-trade severed families, and negroes were very rarely sold without the land. There there were no legal restrictions on emancipation, and a master could educate and civilise and Christianise his slaves if he chose to do so. The proprietor again of a sugar estate in Jamaica or Barbadoes was a very different person from the Carolina cotton-planter. In the West Indies the colonists used almost always to send their children to England, or 'home,' as they loved to say, for education; and years at a public school, very often succeeded by Oxford or Cambridge, restored the young planter to the colony an educated gentleman, his mind chastened and enlarged by English experiences, with English habits and principles, and therefore prepared to do all in his power to civilise and Christianise the serfs on his estate. When he married, his wife was also probably educated in England, and her influence, as far as it went, had the same good tendencies. No doubt cases of injustice and cruelty did occur, for human nature can never be safely intrusted with absolute power; but still slavery was not so hateful or so brutifying as in America. And the consequence was, that the bold act of emancipation in 1834 was achieved without any serious difficulty, and that the slave of yesterday became first the apprentice, and then the hired labourer that he has since remained. So great a transition could not have been accomplished without conflicts, and insurrection, and bloodshed, if the West Indian slaves had not lost much of their original African ignorance ignorance and ferocity, and had not been educated and prepared for the enormous change. The American slaveowners have resolved that any like peaceable revolution shall be with them impossible, and hence the jealous precautions which remorselessly extinguish all teaching or civilisation on their plantations, and guard the approach to the tree of knowledge by vigilance societies and Lynch law. As Judge Clayton is made to say in the novel before us 'No reform is possible unless we are prepared to give up the institution of slavery, and this is so realised by the instinct of selfpreservation, which is unfailing in its accuracy, that every such proposition will be ignored till there is a settled conviction in the community that the institution itself is a moral evil, and a sincere determination felt to be free from it.' There is not so much story in Dred' as in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' but it is more uniformly and intensely painful: here and there the gloom is broken by the irresistible humour of one of the author's pet negro characters, but the momentary gleam only contrasts with the black moral thunder-cloud from which it issues. Interesting characters are only introduced to suffer wrong and persecution; our sympathy is overtaxed throughout; and if there is no one description so painful as Tom's death, yet our feelings are allowed none of the relief of a brighter conclusion. The most carefully elaborated picture is Nina, the heroine. Mrs. Stowe has been kind enough to assist our criticisms by telling us herself what was the character which she intended to paint. This is the description of Nina by Mr. Clayton, her lover: "I'll tell you just what it is: Nina Gordon is a flirt and a coquette -a spoiled child if you will. She is not at all the person I ever expected would obtain any power over me. She has no culture, no reading, no habits of reflection; but she has, after all, a certain tone and quality to her, a certain timbre,' as the French say of voices, which suits me. There is about her a mixture of energy, individuality, and shrewdness, which makes her, all uninformed as she is, more piquante and attractive than any woman I ever fell in with. She never reads; it is almost impossible to get her to read; but, if you can catch her ear for five minutes, her literary judgments have a peculiar freshness and truth. And so with her judgment on all other subjects, if you can stop her long enough to give you an opinion. As to heart, I think she has yet a wholly unawakened nature. She has lived only in the world of sensation, and that is so abundant and so buoyant in her that the deeper part still sleeps. It is only two or three times that I have seen a flash of this under nature look from her eyes and colour her voice and intonation. And I believe-I'm quite sure-that I am the only person in |