themselves together, even in Chamouni, does make itself felt, and at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning a goodly stream of our beloved countrymen and countrywomen, with all their peculiarities of religious observances-their best clothes and neatly bound books-wends its way over the little bridges, and along the fields, into the simple, but decent church, recently allowed to be built for the performance of our liturgy. Then many persons, who during the week have appeared in unmarked costume, shine in the conventional white tie; and, indeed, the display of muslin is so copious that half the men in Chamouni seem to be ecclesiastics.

We have wandered from the Mer de Glace, to mules, and from mules to guides, and from guides to church. Let us go back to the Mer de Glace, because, while on the Mer de Glace, something may be said of the great marvel of the Alps-the glacier. First, what does a glacier look like? Stand on the point at the top of the Montanvert, whence the Mer de Glace is best seen, and you see stretching for miles into the mountains a broad surface of rough, dirty, broken ice. It is split into all kinds of inequalities; it is rent in all directions by great clefts and crevices. To the left it falls over towards the plain; and just where the descent begins, it rises into hugh spires and turrets. From the hill the people moving on it look mere specks. Go down on to it, and you find yourself walking on a rough yet slippery surface of half-melted ice and snow. At one moment you come upon mounds and declivities, where steps have had to be cut with a hatchet; at another to deep holes and crevices, down which you see an infinite depth of greenish blue; here and there huge rocks are to be seen raised above the surface; and on either side stretch the long regular ridges of dirty rock and gravel which go by the name of the Moraine. If you were to stay beside the glacier for several years, you would observe by the changing of the positions of the prominent rocks and marks, that the glacier does not stand still, but moves; so it is defined to be ice in motion. To account for this motion some theories have been proposed. Some have said that the ice melts by simple force of gravitation; that its own weight carries it down; that the bottom melts away, and the superincumbent mass presses down to supply the place of what has melted. Others have said that its descent is caused by the alternate melting and freezing of the great lumps of ice of which it is composed, that it so moves on by fits and starts. But these accounts are now held to be inconsistent with the phenomena of its progress, such as that the middle moves faster than the sides, and the ice on the surface faster than that nearer the bed. The result of the observation of Professor Forbes on the subject is, that a glacier is an imperfect fluid, or viscous body, which is urged down slopes of a certain inclination by the mutual pressure of its parts; and a writer in Murray's "Swiss Guide" illustrates this sort of motion by that of lava descending from the mouth of a volcano, or

honey flowing from an overset jar. So much for the appearance and the cause of glaciers, One of their results we must not omit to notice, and that is the torrent which, formed partly from the land-springs and partly from the fusion of the snow and ice, issues from the base of most of them. From the Glacier du Bois-that at the foot of the Mer de Glace, the stream of the Arveiron issues out of a huge cavern of ice, this source being one of the great sights to be seen. From the glacier and the torrent, together, Professor Forbes has drawn the beautiful idea of a passage which we, imitating the great Murray, (who is aggravating in this respect, that he has said almost everything about every place that it is possible to go to) cannot forbear to quote. "Poets and philosophers have delighted to compare the course of human life to that of a river; perhaps a still apter simile might be found in the history of a glacier. Heaven-descended in its origin, it yet takes its mould and conformation from the hidden womb of the mountains which brought it forth. At first soft and ductile, it acquires a character and firmness of its own, as an inevitable destiny urges it on its onward career, jostled and constrained by the crosses and inequalities of its prescribed path. Hedged in by impassable barriers which fix limits to its movements, it yields groaning to its fate, and still travels forward, seamed with the scars of many a conflict with opposing obstacles. All this while, although wasting, it is renewed by an unseen power; it evaporates, but is not consumed. On its surface it bears the spoils, which, during the progress of its existence, it has made its own; often weighty burdens, devoid of beauty or value, at times precious masses sparkling with gems or with ore. Having at length attained its greatest width and extension-commanding admiration by its beauty and power-waste predominates over supply; the vital springs begin to fail, it stoops into an attitude of decrepitude; it drops the burdens one by one which it had borne so proudly aloft; its dissolution is inevitable. But as it is resolved into its elements, it takes all at once a new and livelier and disembarrassed form; from the wreck of its members it rises another, yet the same; a noble, full-bodied arrowy stream, which leaps, rejoicing, over the obstacles which before had stayed its progress, and hastens through fertile valleys towards a freer existence, and a final union in the ocean with the boundless and the infinite."

It was said just now that the guides and mules are under the direction of the government. It must not be forgotten that this is now the French government, the valley of Chamouni being part of the Savoyard territory ceded by King Victor Emmanuel to Napoleon III. French enterprise is already seen in the improvement of all the roads in the neighbourhood, and the projection of new and better ones. French protection is exercised in the matter of tobacco, and Swiss cigars are contraband. French centralization has not yet effected the reform of the

posting arrangements; there being at Chamouni four messageries, or companies of diligencesMessageries Nationales, Messageries Impériales, Messageries Generales, and a fourth, Messageries something else; each one of these is ready to pay a heavy "pistage," as it is called in Chamouni, to the guide who induces his employer to trust bim with the taking of the places in the diligence. "Pistage" is not good French, and what its derivation may be is not obvious. It is a thing that sours the spirits of many travellers, and of all Chamounites not in the interests of the Messageries; these latter averring that of twenty francs paid to the company for a place to Geneva, at least six go to the guide or waiter who introduces the payer to the office. However this may be, the drive from Chamouni to Geneva is worth more than twenty francs, for it is through some of the most glorious of the domestic parts of Switzerland. There are three ways into Chamouni. It is a thing to be desired that some means should be discovered by which everyone should come in by one-and-a-half and go out by one-and-a-half, for all three deserving "doing." And whatever be the rival claims of the Tête Noir and the Col de Balme, the two passes from Martigny, no one should miss the drive to Geneva.

OUR FRIENDS BEYOND THE SEA.

BY MRS. ABDY.

'Tis truly said that "distance lends
Enchantment to the view;"
The love we bear to absent friends
Is earnest, fond, and true:

Yet some there are, amid the rest,

Who dearest seem to be;

These are the friends we love the bestOur Friends beyond the Sea.

How smoothly pass their sunny days
In lands more fair than ours!
On blue, unclouded skies they gaze,
And cull perpetual flowers;
They walk among the myrtle trees
Beneath the evening star,
Inhale the balmy southern breeze,
And hear the light guitar.

Still is their listening ear beset
By flatteries soft and bland,

Say, are they tempted to forget
Their own, their native land?
Not so-the loveliest scenes of earth

Win not the heart to roam

That once has prized an English hearth,
And loved an English home.

A land of flowers, of light and song
May charm them for awhile;
Yet fondly, fervently, they long

To reach their native isle.

Soon may they seek that favoured ground, Swift may the good ship be

That ranks among its Homeward-Bound Our Friends beyond the Sea!

WHAT WAS THE RIVER SAYING?
What was the river saying,

As it flowed through the flowery lea
In its winsome childhood straying
On its way to the boundless sea?
It sang of a joy without sorrow,
Of life from all trouble free;
And it said to the flowers, "To-morrow
I shall reach the glorious sea."
What was the river saying,

As it broader and stronger grew,
Amidst rocks and wild woods straying?
Was it still to its first hope true?
Oh! it sang in a strain exultant,

In its youth, and beauty, and strength;
And the words of its voice triumphant,
"I shall reach the sea at length."

What was the river saying,

When the rocks on either side
Kept its waters wild from straying,

And but mocked their strength and pride?

Love is a miser too, that hoards

With av'rice keen a look or word, Who garners in his heart of hearts

The whisper low, none else had heard ;

The pebbles on the common path,
The weed all others would pass by,

To him a higher value hath,
Wears deeper beauty to his eye.

Poor alchymist! who spends long days
In search of but one golden gleam,
To find with weary aching heart
At last, 'tis all an idle dream;
Poor miser! who perchance is robb'd
Of that he deems of such high worth;-
Love! dreamer, miser though thou art,
Without thee what were life or earth?

"And now, Cecilia, I want to make assurance doubly sure. You will not go to Central Park with this friend of your cousin's while I am absent?"

"Yes, Horace, you may depend upon me; I will not go to Central Park with him or with any one else. Does that satisfy you, now?" And the last speaker looked up in the gentleman's face with a smile whose exceeding sweetness had just that little touch of wilfulness which made it only the more attractive.

They were standing by the piano, the young lady and gentleman of whom I write, and their whole attitude and expression plainly indicated that some intimate relationship existed between them; and appearances were not at fault this time, for Cecilia Howard had been the betrothed wife of Horace Nicholls for the last three months. They made a pleasant picture to look upon. There was a warm background of crimson curtains and cushioned chairs, and the carpet had a vine of blossoms whose golden flagons were drawn on a russet ground.

Cecilia Howard's years hovered among their early twenties. There was much that was sweet and lovely, and of good report in her character; there was much which was fair and attractive in that young face, where the fresh carnations hovered about her cheeks as the smiles did in her lips and eyes. But her beauty, her grace, and all the natural charms of her manner had not alone won for her the love of Horace Nicholls; he was too sensible a man for that. He knew that the freshness and beauty of youth must fade with years, and that the most disagreeable, repellant, and malicious old women are often those who had nothing to supplant the bloom and grace of their youth, women who lacked cultivation of heart and of mind, and who have no stores laid up to beguile the weariness or lighten the burden of their old age, and who from a frivolous and empty youth pass into a fretful, selfish, miserable old-womanhood.

"God, in His good mercy, deliver me from such a wife!" prayed, reverently, the strong, brave heart of Horace Nicholls. The woman of his choice was not faultless, any more than he was; but Cecilia Howard had a warm, quickly responsive heart, that most beautiful thing in woman. She was the only daughter of her widowed mother, who only escaped making an idol of her child, and had been over-indulgent with her; but Mrs. Howard was a woman of good sense, and she had spared no pains nor expense which her limited means allowed in the education of her child.

Horace Nicholls was the nephew of a bank manager, who had adopted him into his own large family on the death of the boy's parents,

and generously afforded him every advantage which he bestowed on his own half-dozen boys. Horace was naturally thoughtful and studious. He had graduated at college, and because his uncle's penetrations convinced him that he had more force and capacity than any of his own sons, he had offered him a lucrative and responsible position in the bank of which he was manager.

He did not look more than his years, and they were twenty-eight. His face was, I think, a fair index of his character. It was a good, manly face-intelligent, cultivated. Most people regarded him as somewhat reserved; yet, with those who knew him well, he was singularly frank and spontaneous.

There was a magnetic charm about Horace Nicholls to the few to whom he disclosed himself; but his character rested on a basis of solid Christian principle, and the great aim of his life was not simply to please the aesthetic tastes of those over whom he had most influence. But although his character was "drawn on a grave reserve," it was abundantly veined with humour, and a half-covert sportiveness flashed its light all over his conversation.

"Yes, that answer more than satisfies me, my little girl," replied Horace Nicholls to the question of his betrothed. "I am not exacting; I am quite satisfied that you should go to Central Park, only not in company with this Mr. Marshall. I know, notwithstanding his gentlemanlike appearance and personal accomplishments, that he is not a man of sound moral principle, not a man of right heart or life. And the one flower I have gathered to wear in my heart must not waste any of its sweetness or beauty on a man like this one."

Cecilia Howard looked up, and blushed a little betwixt her smiles, as what woman would not at such sweet flattery? Then her thoughts touched on something which troubled her.

"What is it?" asked Horace Nicholls, reading her face.

"Oh, I wish you weren't going away! A week seems a long time, Horace, and I shall be so lonely without you!"

The young man looked down on her, before he answered, with one of his rare sweet smiles, which it was evident from its mingled expression touched on many feelings; but the tenderness triumphed.

"And whenever you feel lonely, darling, remember that my heart answers to yours, Cecilia. The week looks very long to me

Horace Nicholls. "We will put this week of our absence to all good work and uses, and when we see each other again, be a little better man and woman for the teachings of the days which are gone."

"I don't intend to waste the hours, Horace; I expect to make some strong leaps in my German before you return, besides devoting myself to various other work of a more decidedly feminine character which I've laid out to do."

It was very hard to leave her; Horace Nicholls' face bore witness to this as he looked at his watch.

"Is it time?" asked Cecilia.

"Almost; there is time for one song before I go; let me have it."

She swept her fingers over the keys of the piano, and then her voice-it was naturally a fine one and had received careful cultivationflowed through an old, quaint ballad, whose mingled pathos and joy of tenderness gathered itself up at last into a triumphant close of faith and trust in the eternal love and wisdom which shall satisfy and answer with "fulness of joy" all hearts that put their trust in it. And the sweet air, as it throbbed and surged along the ballad, was only a new echo and disclosure of its sentiment in all its finest shades. Horace Nicholls was silent when the last notes ceased to palpitate on the air. He was exquisitely susceptible to the power of music, and it seemed as though the old ballad and the sweet air had expressed somewhat in his heart that words could not.

He drew Cecilia to him, and his last speech, solemn and tender, went beyond this life, even as the life of Horace Nicholls did: "The Lord bless and keep thee, my darling, and give thee peace!" Then he went away without another word.

Three days had passed; the cold snows of winter had rolled thick over the earth, hiding as was best the woe and desolation from her face, for the beauty of the summer and the stately splendour of the autumn had departed from her. But on the fourth day the low, sullen clouds were swept away by the triumphant sunshine; the storm of wind had lifted up its banners and come on; the storm of snow ceased

at last.

Helen Eustis, without any real force of character, had a certain promptness and vivacity, which often served to bear down any slight opposition, and compel acquiescence.

The day certainly was attractive, and three indoors had prepared Cecilia to relish a walk. Then, like most young ladies, she enjoyed intensely the new pleasure and excitement of skating, and would have entered eagerly into her cousin's proposition, if it had not been for the remembrance of her promise to her betrothed. And this memory held her back.

"There is no use to urge me, Helen," she said, with quiet determination, and yet with a little lurking regret in her tones, which prevented her cousin from abandoning the matter. "I cannot go out this afternoon; I have good and sufficient reasons for it."

"What are they, Cecilia?"-in that abrupt manner which in another must have seemed impertinent, but which was Helen's "way;" and the words were partly warranted by an intimacy which had existed betwixt Cecilia and herself since their infancy.

Cecilia hesitated a moment, and then, thinking the best way was to meet her cousin in her own straightforward fashion, answered, quietly

"I promised Horace that I wouldn't go to Central Park while he was away."

"I thought so!" There was a very faint curl of the lip which said vastly more than, with all her freedom of speech and manner, Helen Eustis would have ventured on. "Dear me, I'm thankful I'm not an engaged young lady, if I should in consequence have to be shut up like a nun in a convent."

"I don't know that I am." There was a little shade of annoyance in her voice and manner. "The promise was quite of my own making; Horace didn't ask it."

"Oh well, that alters the case. I thought it was singular enough that he should be so exacting as that. Of course he wouldn't care at all, if you rode up to the Park with brother Daniel and me," seeing that Cecilia's last remark had given her another stand-point from which to renew argument and persuasion.

That her cousin had made an advance on her objections was evident enough by Cecilia's half doubtful reply: "I don't know that Horace would care; but then I promised him, you know."

"What made you promise him such an absurd thing?"

There was a little flutter of embarrassment in Cecilia's face. "There were good reasons; I can't explain them, though."

Helen Eustis was a shrewd girl. She suspected the truth at once; and this suspicion gave her a fresh motive to induce her cousin to accompany her. She was well aware that Horace Nicholls had no respect for the man who was her acknowledged lover; and this knowledge, while it offended her, stimulated her desire to triumph over her cousin's betrothed. The truth is, she had never liked Horace Nicholls. She elt, intuitively, the moral antagonism of their

characters and aims in life, and the real estimate in which he held hers. This conviction galled the girl's pride, and her vanity was piqued because she had never succeeded in gaining the admiration of Horace Nicholls.

She felt that he had penetrated farther into her real character, into the motives which moulded it, and controlled her living, than any man had done before; and that in his heart he had pronounced her worldly, vain, and selfish. And this knowledge not only galled her proud spirit, but gave her a thirst for some petty revenge, and a desire to wound the man through his affections, although she would not have acknowledged this even to her own conscious

ness.

"Excuse me, Cecilia," subjoined the lady, playing with the tassels of her muff, and feeling her way softly along the new ground she had gained, "I didn't mean to intrude on any private reasons you might have for this promise, but I'm altogether certain that if Mr. Nicholls were here, he would insist upon your going with Daniel and me this afternoon. You know what he said, the last time was here, about the absolute necessity of a woman going out of the house every pleasant day at least."

"I remember," more and more inclined to the ride.

"There goes the lunch-bell. Say you'll go. Come, now! Horace will not say a word, I'll wager a new pair of gloves. Shall you be always just so careful and obedient, my little cousin? What a model wife you will make!" The speaker had come over to her cousin's side now, and was stroking her hair, and her smile was a very bright one, only it concealed several things!

"I'm neither fearful nor obedient," nettled again, as Helen meant she should be, under the soft words. "It was wholly my own promise, not Horace's asking."

"Why don't you go, then, when you are certain he wouldd't wish you to keep it under the circumstances? Come, Cecilia, I'm famishing for a sandwich and some coffee."

"Are you sure, Helen, that no one is to go with you excepting Daniel?"

"He and yourself are the only persons to whom I have spoken of it."

Helen thought that she had spoken the truth, for she had too much self-respect to utter a base falsehood; but she concealed something which made her remark only true to the letter.

"Well, I'll go, I believe," was the audible conclusion of Cecilia's meditations, the burden of which was, that if Horace was there he would certainly approve of her doing so; and yet it was singular that she had to repeat this so many times to herself, in order to satisfy her own mind.

"There's a darling." And Helen kissed her cousin, and there was a flash of triumph in her

residence, and Mr. Marshall rose up from the sofa, with a couple of his most graceful bows to the ladies.

Helen's surprise was well acted. "Is it possible, Mr. Marshall? Who expected to find you here, and to what or whom are we indebted for the pleasure?"

"I am indebted for it to your brother, Miss Helen. He informed me that you had engaged to ride with him to Central Park this afternoon, and invited me to join you."

"That is just like Daniel. He always likes to share his rides with somebody who can be more agreeable than his sister," said the young lady, with a toss of her pretty head, and a little pout which she knew how to use on just the right occasion; but she did not think it necessary to acquaint either of her guests with the fact that Daniel would never have thought of inviting his friend to join in the ride, if his sister had not suggested it in the morning, in case the two young men came across each other.

"We are to have the pleasure of your company, Miss Howard?" said George Marshall, as he restored Cecilia the handkerchief which had fallen from her hand to the floor; and he accomplished this little act with all the grace which rendered him so great a favourite with a certain class of ladies.

"I-I hav'n't quite decided," rejoined Cecilia, as she received the handkerchief, and forgot to thank the gentleman, her face full of indecision and pain.

Helen turned around, and faced her cousin with her large, dark eyes. "Why, Cecilia, what has got into you? You promised me that you would go."

“I know that I did; but it was half against my best judgment, and I think now that I must recall it."

The low, steady voice made Helen think that, after all, her cousin might not be over-persuaded against her best judgment; but at that moment the door opened, and Daniel Eustis entered.

He was a good-hearted, well-meaning young man, with a character neither very fine nor high-toned, but kind and good-natured as far as he went. He had always been very fond of Cecilia, and she had a kind of half-sisterly affection for the young man, because of the old, pleasant memories, that knit up many of the golden hours of his and her childhood together; for Daniel Eustis had carried her in his small arms around the nursery, in the earliest dawn of her remembrance.

"Daniel, you've come just at the right moment," observed his sister. "For some unaccountable reason, Cecilia's taken it into her head to go home. Perhaps your entreaties will avail to keep her; mine can't."

Daniel Eustis came up to his cousin, and kissed the peach-bloom on her cheek with the freedom which had always existed in their intercourse; then he took both her hands in his playfully. "You're my prisoner; I shan't let you go, Cecilia," he said, "without the very best of reasons."