clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving. Strange hues came out on lake and shore, far, far below. The air, the very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And we heard the cocks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,

"Behold, darkness shall cover the earth

And gross darkness the people ;

But the Lord shall rise upon THEE,

And his glory shall be seen upon thee!"

Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming life.

Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis

XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the fleur de lis of France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that

devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface, encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the

image. The design of the monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an inexpressible pathos.

Rode in our private voiture to Basle, and rested our weary limbs at the Three Kings.

Friday, 29. Visited the celebrities of Basle, and took the cars for Strasbourg, where we arrived in time to visit the minster.

Saturday, 30. Left Strasbourg by the Rhine morning boat; a long, low, slender affair. The scenery exceedingly tame, like portions of the Lower Mississippi. Disembarked at Manheim, and drove over to Heidelberg, through a continual garden. French is useless here. All our negotiations are in German, with W., S., and G. as a committee on gutturals.

MY DEAR:

LETTER XXXIX.

STRASBOURG.

We arrived here this evening. I left the cars with my

head full of the cathedral.

The first thing I saw, on lifting

my eyes, was a brown spire. Said I,

"C., do you think that can be the cathedral spire?”

"Yes, that must be it."

"I am afraid it is," said I, doubtfully, as I felt, within, that dissolving of airy visions which I have generally found the first sensation on visiting any celebrated object.

The thing looked entirely too low and too broad for what I had heard of its marvellous grace and lightness; nay, some mischievous elf even whispered the word "dumpy" in my ear. But being informed, in time, that this was the spire, I resisted the temptation, and determined to make the best of it. I have since been comforted by reading in Goethe's autobiography a criticism on its proportions quite similar to my own. We climbed the spire; we gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside!a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many hued as the Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was a com

posite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm, expressing, in vast proportions and gigantic masonry, those ideas of infinite duration and existence which Christianity opened before them. A barbaric wildness mingles itself with fanciful, ornate abundance; it is the blossoming of northern forests.

The ethereal eloquence of the Greeks could not express the rugged earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and revelation. This architecture is Hebraistic in spirit, not Greek; it well accords with the deep. ground-swell of Hebrew prophets.

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

"A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.

"And as a watch in the night."

The objection to Gothic architecture, as compared with Greek, is, that it is less finished and elegant. So it is. It symbolizes that state of mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws of exact proportions and architectural refinement. It is Alpine architecture — vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting into flowers at every interval.

The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is a struggle in it, as of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one.