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to wear the Bloomer costume. Her fame rests upon the solid worth of her contributions to our literature. In these she has honored both her sex and her country. Whatever exceptions we may take to her otherwise, this much will be conceded to her by all fair-minded critics. We have space only to add one or two characteristic, though brief, poems:

MY LAYS.

"My lays, my lays, would they might find

An echo in my country's heart!
Be in its home-affections shrined,

Form of its cherished things a part;
Be like wild flowers and common air,
Blooming for all, breathed every-where-
Or like the song of forest bird,
Gushing for all, felt more than heard.
Earnest, untiring, might they be
Like barks before a breeze at sea,

Whose dashing prows point home-
Like good knights bound for Palestine,
Like artists, warmed by fire divine,
O'er icy Alp and Appenine,

Holding their way to Rome

Like arrows flashing through the light,
Like eagles on their sunward flight,
Like to all things, in which we see
An errand and a destiny."

Here is another, uttered in the same free, bold strain:

THE MARCH OF MIND.
"See yon bold eagle, toward the sun
Now rising free and strong,

And see yon mighty river roll
Its sounding tide along:

Ah! yet near the earth the eagle tires;
Lost in the sea, the river;

But naught can stay the human mind-
'Tis upward, onward, ever!

It yet shall tread its starlit paths,
By highest angels trod,

And pause but at the farthest world
In the universe of God.

'Tis said that Persia's baffled king,
In mad, tyrannic pride,
Cast fetters on the Hellespont,
To curb its stormy tide;

But freedom's own true spirit heaves
The bosom of the main-

It tossed those fetters to the skies,
And bounded on again!

The scorn of each succeeding age
On Xerxes' head was hurled,
And o'er that foolish deed has pealed
The long laugh of a world.

Thus, thus defeat, and scorn, and shame,
Be his who strives to bind
The restless, leaping waves of thought,
The free tide of the mind!"

HERE AND THERE; OR, TIDBITS OF TRAVEL.

FROM

BY PROF. OLIVER M. SPENCER.
CHAMOUNI AND MONT BLANC.

Geneva we take the diligence to St. Martins. Our route lies along the banks of the Arve amid scenery well calculated as an introduction to the sublimities of the higher Alps, on account of its wild and picturesque beauty. One moment we are threading a narrow defile or climbing a steep and stony ascent, and the next we are sweeping over a furious torrent, or under a frowning precipice, or beneath the spray of a graceful waterfall. As the crowded diligence goes lumbering over the bridge of St. Martins we catch a view of the distant Alps, which alone would more than repay us for our trip across the Atlantic. The loftiest mountain in Europe, with his attendant, snow-clad peaks, looms up grandly in the distance, with an outline so clearly defined and of a magnitude so stupendous, as to deceive the unpracticed eye and produce an impression of close proximity.

"How far is it to Mt. Blanc?" I inquired of the conducteur.

"More than twelve miles in a straight line." "Impossible."

"You will find it nearly twenty before you get there." And so we did.

The hee, hee, allez of the postillions becomes more emphatic, and the weary horses prick up their ears and quicken their pace as we enter the village of Valenches.

Having dined we exchange the diligence for a calèche or char a banc, an odd-looking vehicle, capable of carrying two or three persons, and, from its great strength and lightness, peculiarly adapted to traveling among the Alps. Our horses, under the inspiration of the music of their bells, dashed off at a rapid rate over the broad plain, where the Arve is accustomed to take up its winter quarters, till we reached the steep and rocky ascent near the village of Chede. From this point we walked the most of the way to Chamouni-a distance of twelve or fourteen miles; yet so bracing and invigorating was the mountain air, and so diversified was the scenery, that on our arrival at the latter place we rather felt refreshed than fatigued.

During the last three hours we have passed through almost every gradation of beauty and sublimity-from a gentle streamlet, skirted with green-sward and enameled with flowers, to a mountain torrent leaping from its dizzy hight and reascending in clouds of mist-from the most quiet scene of pastoral beauty, to the wildest spectacle of savage grandeur-from a simple cascade, dissipating itself into spray, to the

foaming cataract plunging into chasms whose depths one can not even contemplate without a shudder; and now as we enter the vale of Chamouni the climax is reached as the whole range of Mt. Blanc, with its glaciers and aiguilles, rises and recedes in perspective before us.

ence.

The village of Chamouni is characterized, during the summer months, by all the bustle and excitement of a fashionable watering-place. The hotels are usually crowded, and great difficulty is frequently experienced in obtaining accommodations. This we found to be the case by experiThe ladies of our party were accommodated as a matter of course, but how we never could learn. A young student from Paris and myself were finally disposed of by both agreeing to occupy a single bed in the fourth story till some of the guests should depart. This was close quarters, to be sure, as those will best appreciate who have ever seen a Swiss or German bedstead; but I have heard of still closer since. On our return voyage the second cabin of the Atlantic was crowded, as will be inferred from the following conversation. We had been nearly a week out at sea, when a son of the Emerald Isle came on deck and inquired for the captain. "They call me the captain, sir; what 's wanting?"

"I'm after wanting a berth, yer honor." "Wanting a berth! Where have you been stowing yourself away ever since we left port?"

"Why, sir, you see I've been sleeping on top of another man that 's bin seasick; but he 's got better now, and he says an' troth he won't stand it any longer."

We arose the next morning on better terms with each other than with several other bed-fellows that we had never bargained for; but a good breakfast of Alpine trout and chamois venison, with a prospect of better quarters, put us into an excellent good humor.

Immediately after breakfast, mounted on mules, we commenced the ascent of the mountain for the Mer de Glace and Montanvert. Three hours of hard scrambling among broken fragments of rocks and the projecting roots of pines and larches, brought us to the Pavilion. Here we are, more than six thousand feet nearer the blue above than we ever were before, or may ever be again! A magnificent view opens out before us. The lofty evergreens that skirt the mountain's base have dwindled apparently to slender shrubs, while the cattle grazing in the valley below, or on the slopes of the opposite mountain, appear no larger than grasshoppers or beetles. Nearer by the Arveiron rushes forth from its dome-shaped arch at the extremity of the Glacier du Bois, as if just emerging from the bowels of the mount

ain. To the right the Mer de Glace stretches away for leagues and appears like a sea that had been wrought up into tempest and then suddenly congealed; while above us the aiguilles-bristling with pinnacles and castellated turretspierce the very clouds with their colossal obelisks of granite. Nor is the eye less struck with the beauties than the sublimities of the spot. Here are picturesque masses of rock and icebergs of the most fantastic shapes. And here, too, upon the very verge of eternal snow, the lily and hyacinth, the blue-bell and the rhododendron, with a variety of other flowers of surpassing beauty, are strewn around in the wildest profusion.

Our guides having furnished each of us with an alpenstock—a pole about six feet long, with a spike at one end and a chamois horn at the other-we descended upon the Mer de Glace. A near approach discloses immense fissures or rents in the ice, running transversely and extending to the depth of several hundred feet. These crevasses are the chief source of danger in crossing the glaciers. A single misstep and you are gone. Many a daring chamois hunter sleeps his last sleep amid their profound recesses. One of our guides, as he preceded us with a hatchet cutting steps or landing-places for our feet in the treacherous ice, entertained us with an account of a shepherd, who, having lost his footing, was precipitated to the bottom of one of these fissures. Here following the bed of the torrent that ran beneath the vault of ice, he reappeared below at the foot of the glacier, having sustained no further injury than that of a broken arm.

The glaciers constitute not only one of the sublimest features of Alpine scenery, but one of the most singular and striking of natural phenomena. A brief account of their formation and construction may not be uninteresting to some of our readers. Immense quantities of snow, having accumulated upon the Alpine summits during nine months of the year, are partially melted during the three remaining months and converted into a semi-fluid mass. This is urged down the steep declivities and gentle slopes of the mountain by its own weight. As it advances it fills up the hollows or basins that intervene between the adjacent peaks, now spreading out into a broad ice sea, and now winding around a rocky promontory, or contracting itself to one-half its original dimensions, as it passes through a narrow gorge formed by projecting spurs. In consequence of being repeatedly melted and frozen this viscous mass undergoes crystallization, and finally becomes consolidated into ice of a beautiful ultra-marine or azure color. This transformation, however, does not arrest its progress. The enormous sea of ice, bearing

upon its ample bosom large masses of rock and debris, moves steadily onward and downward at the rate of about two feet every twenty-four hours, deeply furrowing the granite sides of the mountain in its irresistible advance, and grinding its rocky bed down to an impalpable dust. As the bottom of its channel becomes more inclined and uneven the surface of the glacier is fractured and rent into fissures. These widen and deepen as it approaches a steep declivity, or some frightful precipice, when the whole mass is upheaved and broken into huge fragments resembling pyramids and obelisks that erelong topple headlong down the steep abyss with a thundering crash that grinds them to powder.

During the summer months the whole surface of the glacier is gradually undergoing the process of melting. The water thus formed, having collected itself, first into rills and then into larger streams, is precipitated, here and there, into a crevasse or fissure in the form of cascades. These again all unite along the bed of the glacier into a single stream, which, gathering strength and velocity as it sweeps along its sub-glacial channel, soon reappears, issuing from beneath its icy arch at the lower extremity of the glacier, a furious torrent that, in its mad and unbridled career, sweeps every thing before it.

Thus, in the economy of nature, are these vast treasures of snow and hail locked up in their mighty reservoirs and bound in fetters of ice, that they may become in reality the fountainheads of life and fertility. As the season of the year approaches when streams and rivers begin to desert their channels, and the thirsty earth every-where opens her parched lips to drink in the shower that does not descend, then gradually these sealed fountains are set at liberty, and leaping joyfully down the sides of the mountain, with a savage and fierce delight, replenish the dried-up springs and empty water-courses, carrying flowers and fruitfulness into the valleys, and joy and plenty to the peasant's heart and household.

"Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"

On our return to Chamouni in the evening we found the whole village in an uproar of excitement, occasioned by the safe return of a party that had just made the ascent of Mt. Blanc. For nearly two days the whole community had been thrown into a state of feverish anxiety. Various were the conjectures and conflicting the accounts with regard to the success of the enterprise. No one talked or seemed to think of any thing else. "What's the news?" meant nothing more nor less than "have you heard any thing from Mt. Blanc ?" Numerous parties had ascended the opposite hights to watch the progress of the adventurers with glasses, and, as certain points in the ascent were reached in safety, a signal was given, which was acknowledged by a number of salutes from several small cannon, which at every discharge waked up the distant echoes of the Alps. But now as the party entered the village, headed by a band of music, and followed by the wives of the guides, who had gone out to embrace their husbands, and congratulate them on their safe return, the excitement knew no bounds. Shopmen desert their shops. The hotels not only empty themselves of their guests, but there is a general exodus from the landlord down to the porter. Chamber-maids and cooks, with bare heads and naked arms, elbow their way among lords and ladies. Guides with their mules and nurses with their babies are mingled promiscuously together. Even the poor cripple has hobbled out on his crutches to join in the general joy, while the chattering cretin, with his shrunken limbs and vacant countenance, laughs in a kind of idiotic glee. All distinctions are forgotten in the universal scramble to see the third lady who has immortalized herself by making the ascent of Mt. Blanc.

"Here she comes!" exclaimed a tall Yankee, who, like Saul, was head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

"How does she look?" nervously inquired a chubby little Englishman as he raised himself on tiptoe, and stretched his neck to its maximum of longitude.

"I can hardly tell," replied brother Jonathan with a sly wink, "but I am rather inclined to think she looks out of her eyes."

Presently a young girl, apparently about sixteen, dressed in Bloomer costume, and with a wan and weary expression of countenance, made her appearance from an upper balcony, courtesied like a prima donna, and then retired amid the prolonged cheers of the enthusiastic crowd. There was an illumination and a display of fireworks in the evening.

The ascent of Mt. Blanc is attended with

both greater difficulty and expense than I had formerly supposed. The present party, consisting of two or three, were accompanied by sixteen guides, besides other attendants to carry provisions, who received for their services one hundred francs apiece.

summits, up, steadily up, till it has reached the
crowning summit of them all, then it is that the
soul expands, and for the first time begins to
take in the sublime conception of its magnitude.
"All that expands the spirit, yet appalls,
Gather round these summits, as to show
How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain man
below."

But we may not always linger even amid such scenes as these; so, mounted upon our mules, we are off for Martigny by the pass of the Tete Noir. This embraces some of the wildest scenery among the Alps. A brilliant morning, a pleasant party, a constant succession of agreeable surprises, and one of the most communicative of guides, who, in addition to his services as muleteer, volunteered those, also, of a French teacher, contributed to make the trip a most delightful one. As our path crossed one of those rich mountain pasturages, which here and there dot the Alps like so many emerald isles, the inmates of the chalet-a structure very much resembling one of our western log-cabinswere busily engaged in hay-making. Noticing the awkward manner in which they handled the short scythe, I dismounted, and begged the priv

Late at night I returned to my room, but not to sleep. The bustle and excitement of the day, and now, at the dead hour of night, the continual roar of the Alpine torrents, and the occasional thunder of a falling avalanche, proved too much for my shattered nerves. I arose, and, drawing aside the window curtain, gazed out upon a scene of greater beauty and sublimity than my pen dare attempt to portray. The sparkling waters of the furious Arve dance in the moonbeams beneath my window with a wild and delirious joy. The forests of pine that skirt the base of the mountain seem, with their saintly forms and uplifted, outstretched arms, as if paying their acts of silent devotion to heaven above, or pronouncing their benedictions upon the earth beneath. The ice cliffs, with their precipitous hights and countless pinnacles, glitter in the moonbeams like pyramids of polished silver. The mountain peaks, rising successively one above another, are now clothed in somber ever-ilege of showing them how a Buckeye would do green, and now sparkling with crystals of eternal frost. Far above these, towering majestically, and wrapt in his everlasting drapery of snow, like a robe of ermine, Mt. Blanc lifts his hoary crest, simple, solemn, and sublime, the monarch of them all.

There he stands! At times he appears like some mighty, steel-clad warrior surrounded by his body guard, with their snowy helmets glittering in the morning sun. At others, when the storm is abroad, encircling his brow with angry clouds, he reminds you of Jupiter enthroned among the gods, hurling the thunderbolt, scattering the lightnings, and firing the heavens. But not so to-night. All is calm and still. The hoary mountain rises silently from the midst of his forests of pine like some colossal altar, whose summit, surrounded by light and fleecy clouds, and attended by a train of stars, like so many golden censers exhaling incense to the skies, might constitute a shrine before which an angel might bow in silent adoration as in the immediate presence of the Infinite. This, and much more that my pen can not describe, suffused my eyes with tears as I turned away and wept for joy.

Perhaps the impression produced by a first view of Mt. Blanc, as at Niagara or St. Peter's, is that of disappointment. But as the eye travels slowly up from the base of the mountain, from one peak to another of the surrounding

it.

Though neither born nor bred a farmer, I managed to cut considerable of a swath.

"Tres bon! Tres bon!" shouted the peasants as they clapped their hands, while I, elated with so much applause, set off on a full trot to overtake our little caravan.

In one of these Alpine passes the variety of the scenery is only equaled by the variableness of the temperature. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter are comprehended at different elevations within a single day. Here the grain has been harvested, here it is green, and here it refuses to grow at all. Now we skirt along a rocky ledge or frightful precipice, amid somber forests of the larch and pine, and now we rise into a region where flowers and butterflies enjoy a summer of only a fortnight's duration. Below us are green fields and smiling meadows, where you may still hear the tinkling of bells and the murmur of waterfalls. Above us are the rocks and eternal snows, intrenched amid solitude and utter silence. Here and there a solitary lichen, the last effort of exhausted nature to vegetate, relieves the aspect of the surrounding desolation.

Among those rocky fastnesses are the eagle's eyrie and the haunts of the chamois, while far above their summits the bearded condor of the Alps sweeps aloft in a series of spiral curves, till he appears as a dim, blue speck in the heavens, and is finally lost to the aching vision.

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EDITOR'S REPOSITORY.

Scripture Cabinet.

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN.-" Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." John vii, 16, 17.

He is a true Christian indeed, not he that is only book-taught, but he that is God-taught; he that hath "an unction from the holy One," as our apostle calleth it, "that teacheth him all things;" he that hath the spirit of Christ within him, that searcheth out the deep things of God. For as "no man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God."

Ink and paper can never make us Christians, can never beget a new nature, a living principle, in us; can never form Christ, or any true notion of spiritual things, in our hearts. The Gospel, that new law which Christ delivered to the world, it is not merely a letter without us, but a quickening Spirit within us. Cold theorems and maxims, dry and jejune disputes, lean syllogistical reasonings, could never yet of themselves beget the least glimpse of true heavenly light, the least sap of any saving knowledge in any heart. All this is but the groping of the poor dark spirit of man after truth, to find it out with his own endeavors, and to feel it with his own cold and benumbed hands. Words and syllables, which are but dead things, can not possibly convey the living notions of heavenly truths to us. The secret mysteries of a divine life, of a new nature, of Christ formed in our hearts, they can not be written or spoken; language and expressions can not reach them; neither can they ever be truly understood except the soul itself be kindled from within, and awakened into the life of them. A painter that would draw a rose, though he may flourish some likeness of it in figure and color, yet he can never paint the scent and fragrancy. Or, if he would draw a flame, he can not put a constant heat into his colors. He can not make his pencil drop a sound. All the skill of cunning artisans and mechanics can not put a principle of life into a statue of their own making. Neither are we able to inclose in words and letters the life, soul, and essence of any spiritual truths, and as it were incorporate it in them. Virtue can not be taught by any certain rules or precepts. Men and books may propound some directions to us, that may set us in such a way of life and practice, as in which we shall at last find it within ourselves and be experimentally acquainted with it; but they can not teach it like a mechanic art or trade. No surely. "There is a spirit in man, and

VOL. XX.-20

the inspiration of the Almighty giveth" this "understanding." But we shall not meet with this spirit any where but in the way of obedience. The knowledge of Christ, and the keeping of his commandments, must always go together, and be mutual causes of one another.

ORIGINAL SIN." Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Psalm li, 5.

Some persons would persuade us that these words are only a hyperbolical aggravation of David's early sins and propensity to evil from his childhood. But the text is strong and plain in asserting sin, some way or other, to belong to his very conception, and to be conveyed from his natural parents; which is a different idea from his actual sins, or even from his early propensity to sin in his infancy. It asserts and shows the cause or spring both of this evil propensity and of his actual sinning, which operated before he was born. So that these expressions can not be a hyperbole, or figurative exaggeration of what is, but it seems a downright fiction of what is not, if original pravity be not thus conveyed and derived.

THE REJECTED STONE OF THE BUILDERS.-" The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner." Mark xii, 10. See also Psa. cviii, 22; Matt. xxi, 42; Luke xx, 17; Acts iv, 11; and 1 Peter ii, 7.

The rabbins say that among the materials collected by David for the Temple was an angular piece of granite, which attracted a great deal of attention, before the building commenced, from its strange shape and the largeness of its bulk, but afterward became a source of perpetual annoyance to the workmen, whose progress was retarded by it. They attempted to make it fit in the foundation, where its supposed deformity might escape observation; and, after repeated failures, it was carried away, and would have been forgotten but for the proverb it occasioned, "A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense." At length the building was completed, all except an unaccountable opening at the head of the corner, for which no provision had been made, and which the utmost skill of the architect could not fill, till the derided stone was thought of, brought upon the ground, and hoisted to the top, amid the glad hosannas of the multitude. "The stone rejected by

the builders had become the head of the corner."

WERE THE EVANGELISTS ILLITERATE?-We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the application of this epithet, and to glory in it, without considering its different meaning in reference either to their times

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