dral and picture gallery, where was an exquisite Eva. Slept at Meudon.

Tuesday, July 19. Rode through Payerne to Freyburg. Stopped at the Zahringer Hof- most romantic of inns. Our gentlemanly host ushered us forth upon a terrace overhanging the deep gorge of the Saärine, spanned, to the right and left of us, by two immense suspension bridges, one of which seemed to spring from the hotel itself. Ruins of ancient walls and watch towers lined the precipice.

After dinner we visited the cathedral to hear the celebrated organ. The organist performed a piece descriptive of a storm. We resigned ourselves to the illusion. Low, mysterious wailings, swelling, dying away in the distance, seeming at first exceedingly remote, drew gradually near. Fitful sighings and sobbings rose, as of gusts of wind; then low, smothered roarings. Anon came flashes of lightning, rattling hail, and driving rain, succeeded by bursts of storm, and howlings of a hurricane-fierce, furious, frightful. I felt myself lost in a snow storm in winter, on the pass of Great St. Bernárd.

One note there was of strange, terrible clangor - bleak, dark, yet of a lurid fire that seemed to prolong itself through all the uproar, like a note of doom, cutting its way to the heart as the call of the last archangel. Yes, I felt myself alone, lost in a boundless desert, beyond the abodes of man; and this was a call of terror-stern, savage, gloomy - the call as of fixed fate and absolute despair.

Then the storm died away, in faint and far-off murmurs; and we broke, as it were, from the trance, to find ourselves, not lost, but here among the living. We then drove quietly to Berne.

Wednesday, July 20. Examined, not the lions, but the bears of Berne. It is indeed a city of bears, as its name imports. There are bears on its gates, bears on its fountains, bears in its parks and gardens, bears every where. But, though Berne rejoices in a fountain adorned with an image of Saturn eating children, nevertheless, the old city -quaint, quiet, and queer-looks as if, bear-like, it had been hybernating good-naturedly for a century, and were just about to wake up.

Engaged a voiture, and drove to Thun. Dined, and drove by the shore of the lake to Interlachen, arriving just after a brilliant sunset.

Thursday, July 21. S. and G. remained at the Belvedere. W., H., and I took a guide and voiture for Lauterbrunn. Here we visited Byron's apocalyptic horse-tail waterfall, the Staubbach. This waterfall is very sublime, all except the water and the fall. Whoever has been "under the sheet" at Niagara will not be particularly impressed here. This picture is sufficiently accurate, with the exception of the cottage. People here do not build cottages under waterfalls.

Here we crossed the Wengern Alps to Grindelwald. The Jungfrau is right over against us-her glaciers purer, tenderer, more dazzlingly beautiful, if possible, than those of Mont Blanc. Slept at Grindelwald.

DEAR CHILDREN:

To-day we have been in the

Wengern Alps

described in Manfred. Imagine us mounting, about ten o'clock, from the valley of Lauterbrunn, on horseback

our party of three-with two guides. We had first been to see the famous Staubbach, a beautiful, though not sublime, object. Up we began to go among those green undulations which form the lower part of the mountain.

It is haying time; a bright day; all is cheerful; the birds sing; men, women, and children are busy in the field. Up .we go, zigzag; it grows steeper and steeper. Now right below me is a field, where men are literally working almost on a perpendicular wall, cutting hay; now we are so high that the houses in the valley look like chips. Here we stand in a place two thousand feet above the valley. There is no shield or screen. The horse stands on the very edge; the guide stops, lets go his bridle, and composedly commences an oration on the scene below. "O, for mercy's sake, why do you stop here?" I say. "Pray go on." IIc looks in my face, with innocent wonder, takes the bridle on his arm, and goes on.

Now we have come to the little village of Wengern, whence the Wengern Alps take their name. How beautiful! how like fairyland! Up here, midway in air, is a green nook, with undulating dells, and shadowy, breezy nests, where are the cottages of the haymakers. The Delectable Mountains had no scene more lovely. Each house has its roof heavily loaded with stones. "What is that for?" I ask. "The whirlwinds," says my guide, with a significant turn of his hands. "This is the school house," he adds, as we pass a building larger than the rest.

Now the path turns and slopes down a steep bank, covered with haycocks, to a little nook below, likewise covered with new hay. If my horse is going to throw me any where, I wish it may be here: it is not so bad a thing to roll down into that hay. But now we mount higher; the breezy dells, enamelled with flowers and grass, become fewer; the great black pines take their place. Right before us, in the purest white, as a bride adorned for her husband, rises the beautiful Jung.