lows the hand of the great original. With such a pictured view, further description would be supererogation. The road to Geneva is alive with cascades of every variety of beauty; and it towers up with castellated mountains, into whose hearts large grottoes open. The fountain of Palerines, where there is a re coil in a parabolic curve of sixty feet, cannot be forgotten.

We passed, on going around a mountain, the exquisite cascade of Chede. The first jet is round and full, falling upon a rocky terrace, midway, where it divides into two other cascades, forming the shape of a heart, leaving a black rock within its silver setting. I cannot convey by language, nor by comparison, any adequate idea of the beauty of these cascades. We find them leaping like spirits from heaven out of clouds upon everlasting rocks, and detaining the eye with their grace, and the ear with their melody.

The cascade Nant d'Arpenaz was a joy for ever. Learing our char, and bidding our courier and driver await, we wended our way over the meadows to its base. I leaped from rock to rock, until I sat under its spray, upon a boulder, my feet dangling amid flowers of loveliest blue. If you can imagine one of our ordinary Buckeye hills, say two hundred feet high, suddenly monstered into one of a thousand feet; one side perpendicular, with rocks standing on a horizontal basis; the middle point arching in great curved strata, and the other side an immense castellated mountain, which, unlike the other mounts, seemed serene amidst the primeval fire which once wildly interfused and intertwisted the granite ledges, you may have a faint idea of the mountain source of this cascade. along are the results of the elder fires, scathing, melting, tearing, convulsing the mighty ribs of earth, and pitching them in defiance of heaven at its very portal; but this great castlemount seems rather to have grown, so close and systematic is its gigantic masonry. Out of its arched granite heart there bursts a volume of whitest water, written full of beauteous characters, illuminated with prisms, fleecy as a nun's veil in the air, and

All

buoyed up like powdery snow-flakes! So long is it in falling, that its points shoot out and burst like little rockets or miniature comets, with a nucleus and a streamer; or rather like the whitest steam puffs, curling and evanishing. The column, before it falls, bespreads itself wide and thin, but gathers into point below, where in a torrent it plays among rocks down the distance of thirty feet, then leaps in full column into a seething basin of hollow profundity, which roars and boils furiously.

The mind cannot find imagery for so beautiful an object, dashing out of so swelling an arch in so wild a spot. One likened it to a plume; another to a white pennon, floating feathery; another to Love, smiling in Hope and singing on the bosom of Might. Cheever likens it, or a similar fountain, to the fall of Divine grace into the Christian heart. Liken it to what you will, its serene undertone sung, and will ever sing to the soul of Memory—a radiant living thing amidst terrific immovableness. I leaped from rock to rock, plucked some flowers at its feet, felt its music thrill the heart, and was soon off again amidst the castles in the air, real and palpable, which line this Genevan road.

In the town of Bonneville, we saw a monument to a prince Carlo Felici, erected to his memory, because he―dammed the town (the old sinner!) to protect it against the torrent Arve which rushes along the valley.

With what trembling anxiety we approached Geneva, those only can tell who have been pilgrims for two months or more, without a word from home. At Geneva were our letters. The scenes grew less attractive as we neared the rural city. What chances and changes there had been among loved ones, we almost feared to know. We hoped, oh! how earnestly, that all were well and living as we left them. Can they be all well and living? Vain inquiry! Is not such a mournful blindness a part of that kind Providence, which is ever training the soul to rely upon the Almighty Word? Is it not a part of the lesson which God gives, to the weak and inconstant in faith?

With hearts painfully tremulous, we broke the seals, to find, alas! that one household near to us, was deprived of its happy children-that one hearth was no longer vocal with the merry twattling and play of the meek-eyed little ones. May God mercifully guard the living, is the prayer we waft from this home of Calvin, to our own dear Ohio!

XXV.

In and around Geneva.

"The Rhone by Leman's waters washed,
Where mingled, yet separate, appears

The river from the lake, all bluely dashed
Through the serene and placid glassy deep."

Byron.

HERE is so much impressed, almost simultaneously, upon the mind in these mountain regions, that it staggers under the confused mass, in the very intoxication of bewilderment. One should have a subtle and pliant pen to picture, imperfectly even, these vicissitudes of sublimity and beauty upon lake and river, hill and mountain. At one time, you are called to view a place so desolate and wild, that you would think it was created for the last of human mould. Again you slide down almost insensibly into the loveliest pastures, by the most beautiful brooks, surrounded by the home-endearing châlets, the fragrance of new mown hay, and flowers of every hue. Again you shudder under imminent craggy heights, to gaze at which almost takes away your breath; to emerge upon a shore like that of Leman, whose pure water under the sun-ray, gleams like a bluish gem set in emerald, and sparkles with a light more diamond-like than even the bay at Naples, while its shelving green lawns, or vine-terraced margins, rise under an atmosphere of beauty where love loved to linger, and yet lingers in the pages of Rousseau, and the poetry of Byron. You have heard of Mont Blanc being seen sixty miles from the spot where he rears his high head, and being reflected in clear placid Leman lake near Geneva's walls at that distance: have you not? Were you now at my window at this hour of

sunrise, you might well wonder, start and adore, at the revelation of splendors, dazzling and soul-entrancing, playing against the immovable masses of snow and ice which gild the sides and glitter in the crown of Blanc. Could my Buckeye reader look westward from Zanesville, and see an elevation of 16,000 feet, surrounded by others a few thousand less, through a perspective of mountains snow-blanched and pine-clad, robed everlastingly, and all so solemn, so still, so sublime—rising out of Columbus, and glaring down plainly to the eye; he would wonder, if this be our common world-would he not?

But too much of the descriptive wearies. You would prefer to hear of these republican cantons; how they sustain the lone banner (for France can hardly be called republican as yet), amidst the serried and surrounding ranks of absolutism. Americans are apt to think Switzerland a place of little consequence-so deeply hid in the mountains that she cannot permeate Europe with any influence. We think of her as under a great shadow, cast out from communication with the 'rest of mankind.' Only enter Geneva, ride up the Lake Leman, whose banks are bedecked with homes of simple elegance, and through Vaud and Berne, whose fields are alive with the results of industry, and there will be found a civilization ripe and advanced, by no means circumscribed to the châlet of the peasant, or the hut of the cowherd. Wherever government assures man that he may enjoy the fruits of his labor, as it does here, where every one is industrious, comfort, and even elegance, will reign. How different are the people here from those in the south or middle of Italy. Here industry toils for ever, yet in perfect contentment. There is not the ostentatious gayety which dances under the festal garlands or surrounds the bedizened altars of the streets of Naples ; but there is a quiet, substantial air of happiness, such as Goldsmith pictured in his 'Traveller,' when, from one of these mountain summits, he surveyed mankind in search of the true philosophy of life. Whether it be the tidy peasant girl in her white bodice, partly hid in dark velvet, knitting at dusk in the door