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thought occurred, was it worth while putting on all their raiment again for the short interval before the next dip? It was decided in the negative; and, each tying up in a bundle his whole raiment, the shoes excepted, the party marched on by the ridge of a hill, feeling next to absolute certainty that for many hours they would meet with no human being. They were mistaken, however; for to their consternation they beheld creeping up from the valley below, and likely to flank them a little ahead, a few human beings, looking from the distance like black beetles. From information subsequently acquired, it was believed that those formed a Presbyterial visitation," consisting of certain clergymen and elders of the Church of Scotland whose function it was to cross the uninhabited wilds and hold Christian and social intercourse with the inhabitants of the next strath. These grave personages, seeing the classical forms on the skyline of the hill, were doubtless exceedingly curious as to the solution of the phenomenon, and made such rapid approaches towards it, that what was to be done was a problem. At first the classical figures took to leaping and yelling, with the best imitation they could make of the Sioux war-cry. Finding this of no effect, they set to hurling down boulders; and, though these were not aimed at the invaders, but merely, in nautical language, athwart their bows, the menacing demonstration had the desired effect; and the sight that greeted their eyes on that occasion may yet, for all I know, be an unsolved problem, discussed at Presbytery dinners, and set down by the sagacious as an optical delusion. No-it would be absolute insanity to try such tricks in these valleys. In fact, when sorely tempted to a plunge into the transparent liquid, when you think you have got yourself finely hidden behind a rock or a bush, if you look round before committing yourself to extremities,

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DXC.

you will probably find that you are carefully watched by the gentle eyes of a mädchen or two, who have placed themselves in a position, unobtrusive perhaps, but suitable to their determination of watching the queer and unaccountable motions of the foreigner to their practical conclusion.

The lake scenery here is delicious. If you want wild tarns among precipices and snows you can have them. If you get tired of snow and ice, and precipices, and roaring torrents, as people sometimes do, then go down to the Attensee or the Abersee, and there you will find the sweetest of soft lake scenery, with its dimples and smiles, wooing you through glades overshadowed by trees, or over green pastures where you can see the whole expanse of broad waters glittering in sunlight or shimmering in moonlight-or, in what is perhaps the most beautiful of all conditions of lake scenery, that evening light when the banks are so perfectly mirrored on the surface of the waters that the landscape doubles itself like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. Then if you get tired of the luxurious softness in its turn, the remedy is immediate, for these lakes are barred in at their upper reaches by enormous rocks. You may stand right opposite to the great flat precipice of St Wolfgang with its echo, and recall there the curious melancholy pathos of Longfellow's story of Hyperion, and the turbulent outcries with which his jovial English friend awakened the responses. "Ho, ho, ho!" shouted Berkeley, and the sound seemed to strike the wall of stone like the flapping of steel plates. "Ho, ho, ho! how are you to-day, St Wolfgang? you infernal old rascal! how is the Frau von Wolfgong? God save great George our King! Damn your eyes; hold your tongue; ho, ho! ha, ha, hi!”

The town of Salzburg itself is a glorious place-spreading forests, precipices, and clefts-a vast mountain screen and a glittering and abounding river.

It is, per

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haps, that town above all others in the world from which Edinburgh may stand in greatest dread of rivalry. The castle appears from_a distance exceedingly like ours. It seemed to me not quite so high, but that might be from the depressing effect of the surrounding mountains. The glory of Edinburgh consists in its combination with mountain scenery of the architectural triumphs of man in a great town. To estimate the full merit of the whole we must multiply, as it were, the value of the scenery by the number of inhabitants. Now, the population of Edinburgh is about twenty times that of Salzburg. It follows that in adjusting the hierarchy of picturesque cities Edinburgh must have it by a long way. But this does not interfere with the belief that for holiday purposes Salzburg is by far the more enjoyable scene of the two. The normal condition of the holiday wanderer is a man saturated with city work and city enjoyments, seeking the blessed air of heaven and the surface of the earth covered with its primitive verdure; and I don't know any stronger testimony to the charms of "Edina, Scotia's darling seat," than that annual exhibition which we see-not so much to our comfort as it may be to our pride of tourists who had set off to be entirely rural in their achievements, and yet linger round us day after day and sometimes week after week, unable to tear themselves away from the beautiful city.

During the whole period of my ramble in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, I did not meet a single fellow-countryman; and, as the converse or consequence of this, I was not solicited by a single guide, or invaded by the presence of any human being offering me entertainment in the shape of national music, wrestling, or any other. These are the torments that make life miserable in Switzerland, and to be rid of them is a felicity that would reconcile one to a considerable inferiority in the attractiveness of the scenery. Guides are, I believe, to

be had when wanted, and are moderate in their charges and honest; not like a scamp I once employed in the Oberland at the rate of five francs a-day, who charged fifteen francs for the first day's work, saying I had dragged him through three days' journey, and taking to his bed next day to confirm the imposition.

On the present occasion I had no intention of attempting feats which require guideship. Though I had fine weather, it was rather late in the year for escapades. Then my second morning outlook within the range of the Alps, showed the mantle of snow stretching a thousand feet or so further down than the day before. On the Alps, by the way, one does not see the patches of summer snow familiar to us on Ben Nevis and the Cairngorm Mountains a very characteristic feature, looking as if nature had at one time intended us to be Alpine, and had broken off when the thing was half done. These summer snows of Scotland exist not on the tops of the mountains, but in crevices often a good way down, and they owe their immunity to protection from the sun. On the Alps, on the other hand, the heat of the southern sun melts the snow, unless it be high enough up to put all sunshine at defiance. We thus have not in Scotland sufficient masses of snow to get up a permanent glacier. I once saw, however, a temporary one. It was on a small scale, but very complete, with all its little crevasses and icebergs, and that feature so peculiar to the glacier of dirtiness on the surface, but the most beautiful light-blue ice beneath. The occasion on which I saw this phenomenon was in March, after a great snow-storm. It was on the shoulder of Ben Wyvis, and beside the stream of the Peffer. This ran through a cake of snow about 10 feet thick, and in a thaw had brought down a tremendous cargo of the article tossed into its bed from the steep banks on either side. At a sudden turn the stream had refused to carry its cargo any farther,

and there it had accumulated, crushed by the dammed-up waters of the stream, and crushing itself by its own weight until it found relief in hardening itself, by a sort of crystallisation, into those forms which constitute the Alpine glacier.

It is perhaps only fair that those who discourse of these regions to a British public should give warning that no one should approach them, whose conscience and nerves will not stand the presence of graven images and attempted likenesses of multitudes of things both in heaven and in earth. This is not so gratuitous or silly a remark as some may count it, for I have known people of sane minds and grave walk in life, who have become in a manner frantic at beholding such things, and have threatened such irreverence towards them as would be very dangerous in a land where every man goes about him with a flame of religious zeal inside him, and a sharp knife outside. There is a wonderful reliance on the sanctity these works of art impose, for they are of all sizes and weights, and generally utterly unprotected. They could be removed with as much ease and as little chance of detection as your trays and your cups and saucers, if you thought fit to distribute these along the pathways of a neighbouring wood, for the purpose of trying whether your favourite scheme for abolishing dishonesty in the human race had yet culminated to perfection. In a ramble through Upper Bavaria and the Tyrol, any one disposed to brave the consequences might easily collect gratuitously a considerable picture and statue gallery. I am not prepared to say that the pieces would come up to old-fashioned notions of high art; but there would be a deal of earnestness throughout, and that, according to many people's notions, is far more valuable.

There is a deep, subtle interest in these little shrines and other efforts of commemorative art to those who consider that the shape in which

the human effort towards devotional utterance develops itself, is always important and interesting. Though using the word interesting, I cannot say that I profess a high admiration for the minds that can embody devotion in such shapes; yet I can hardly bring myself to hate them so cordially as those who, abjuring this form of materialising sacred things, adopt another which stands forth in rivalry with it. There is a something which it would seem that the human mind must have to feed it or amuse it in certain stages of development, and if there is violent repudiation of the element in one form, it must be received in another. So the sects who have been most vehement against the impersonation of sacred things in painting and sculpture, have themselves impersonated them in literature in a shape which, to neutral persons, is not less offensive; for what else than impersonation are those efforts professing to be piety, which invest the most sacred of existences with human qualities and defects, become familiar with them, chat with them, profess to "walk all day long" with them, occupying their peculiar attention, and are their recording secretaries to tell the world what is done above?

However, this is dangerous ground, and we have no occasion to tread it; but I am loth abruptly to leave the pictures and graven images, for they really have made themselves so much in a manner one's companions in wild mountain solitudes, that it feels like a forgetting of good-fellowship to pass them too lightly over. In fact, they produce too much impression on the mind of the solitary wayfarer to be easily forgotten. On a wild rocky path, under the shade of solemn pines and precipices, and while the evening is darkening into night-to come upon these calvaries or crucifixes, where there are the best efforts the district art can afford to exemplify wounds and torture, the event of death, and the dead carcass, hardly tends to infuse lively emotions and

elevate the mind to take the end of the journey joyfully. The life-size, and more than life-size, crucifixions, are sometimes exceedingly ghastly. A notion of antiquity generally associates itself with these. The painting peels off, the wood decays, in the wild mountain winters. There is a traditional character too about them, taken from the works of old artists. That they must be old things, is an idea perhaps the more natural to inhabitants of our country, because we know that everything of the kind we have among us is older than the reformed religion. But I have come across them spick and span new-great things very costly, with the paint on the wounds hardly dry. There is a deal of money invested in them; query, with how much of sincerity? It is the natural supposition that to impel one to invest in something so ancient, quaint, and irrational, according to Protestant notions, there must be a vast fund of ill-directed zeal, otherwise called superstition. And yet, perhaps, it may not always be so; and the same very civilised defects which mar the beauty of the more rational forms of religion may even also affect this old barbarous type. In pointing to the handsome organ presented to the parish church by the county member, or to the actual chapel built for an increasing dissenting body by a fortunate manufacturer, one will decide, with a feeling of the utmost certainty of the justice of the decision, that the expenditure in either case has been made from motives utterly selfish and worldly-not for the glory of God, but the applause of man, and something more real following on the applause. And in looking upon those silent costly commemorations on the wayside, it did occur to me, that older as they are in civilisation, and less rational as adjuncts of religion, it is possible that some of them may owe their origin to a desire for popularity among the pious, or some other object not less of this world than

the inducements which among us make people do so many things avowedly for the other.

It would seem as if the German religious mind cannot help develop. ing itself in colours, although it has never had the excuse of the old Italian mind, that it thus presented the perfection and loveliness of the Christian dispensation to the mere animal eye with a perfectness that never would have been believed before, and that has never been approached since. The German has done a deal of work in the same direction very well, and very unconsciously of shortcomings, from Wollgemoth downwards; and in the most orthodox districts the churches shock our ecclesiastic respectabilities, not only with representations from Holy Writ, but with the fat face of Luther, and the sensitive, shy countenance of Melanchthon. Such horrors, are, of course, not to be found in the Tyrol ; but there the propensity to picturing, with a tone of religion about it, is not entirely confined to the authorised symbols and commemorations of the Catholic Church. The country is strewed with pictures attesting a religious influence that comes home to every heart, Protestant or Popish. It is a domestic religion, testifying, in its own way, the power of the domestic affections on that simple people.

I refer to what every one who has travelled there must have noticed the commemorative pictures dedicated to departed relations, and especially to those who have been cut off by any tragic calamity. A representation is given of the ungluck or calamity, and often the nearest relations, male and female, are ranged in a row on either side. The more common of the deaths thus represented are from avalanches, drowning in rivers, and the falling of trees. Whether on account of the limited capacities of the artists, or in pursuance of some principle, there is no attempt to portray the agonies of death. The sufferer's head appears above the

snow or the stream with a placid smile of hope radiating over the features, as he contemplates a vision of the cross or of the Saviour welcoming him upwards. There is not much else of the aesthetic, or any trace of high art, in these humble memorials. Will some far-sighted philosopher now be so kind as to inform us whether these productions indicate a latent instinct for art, which would ripen into excellence if encouraged; or whether, on the other hand, a people with any artistic taste in their nature would rather have no pictures at all than such as these? Be his answer what it may, there is something gentle and affectionate in the custom, commending those who follow it to one's good graces.

If there is any one on the lookout for something to found a special reputation on, he might do worse than take this style of art under his protection. So many schools of art that our ancestors never dreamed about being worthy of special attention have lately been drawn out of their obscurity, and found, on examination, to be the expositors of wonderful systems of philosophy, religion, or æsthetics, that the article is getting scarce. The peculiarities in that old specimen of the German school, for the stiffness and rigidity of which our fathers were contented with no sounder a reason than that the artist could draw no better, are found, after a laborious analytical comparison with other specimens, to symbolise some of the profoundest and most sacred mysteries of our religion. Those old carvings, which the vulgar-minded took for combs and looking-glasses and platters and buckets, are the mystic types of matter and spirit and the sacred lingum; while the flourish, which persons of limited view set down as a mere effort of artistic skill, is the Buddhist symbol of eternity— and so forth.

The first step, of course, will be to make a large collection of drawings of the unglucks-say a thousand or

two. You will then classify the peculiarities of each, giving special weight to everything indicating bad and unnatural drawing—for in that you can always find something deep. You must get up earnestness for the task. For superficial use you may keep, as if in a mental pepper-box, a few expressions, such as "noteworthy," "robust," "athletic," "healthy," and "truthful," with which you can sprinkle your work to season it for the public palate; but remember that earnestness—a great quantity of earnestness-must be at the root of all. Don't trouble yourself about the external tokens of success. Remember it is endeavour, not success, that is entitled to immortality. That you have devoted the best years of your life to earnest strivings after what you have never attained, will be a touching and attractive feature in your autobiography. Never mind, then, though your judicious but knowing friend makes offensive use of the word "bosh," and the world in general is inclined to treat you as a good sort of person with a bee in his bonnet. You are certain to enlist some disciples if you stick steadily to your work; and the fewer these are, the more implicit will be their faith in you, and the louder and fiercer their proclamations that you are the true prophet, and that the age is a mere sham, driving in its respectability-gig through the twilight of the gods into chaos and blank impossibilities.

There are other memorials of the departed in this strange land-memorials of a very real kind-not pleasant, perhaps, but exceedingly curious, and such as Sir Thomas Browne might have spun a wondrous web of fancy from. In many parts of the world it is the custom to collect together the bones of the dead, especially the skulls. Everybody has seen or heard of the Catacombs at Paris. One comes on great ugly heaps of skulls in Switzerland and in the south of Ireland. But they are indiscriminately heaped together, separated from all identification, and