moment, in bidding farewell forever to the land of azure skies, and classical waters, of ancient monuments and modern arts, of poetry, music, and romance may be better imagined than described.

We did not reach Domo d'Ossola till 8 o'clock in the evening. This town is situated at the head of the vale, encircled on all sides by the Alps. It has two thousand inhabitants, a mimic Corso, in imitation of that at Milan, and a large Duomo, whence the name of the village was derivedthe Cathedral of the vale of Ossola. The place has a good deal of bustle and business, being near the frontier, and the rendezvous of Italian and transalpine merchants. Good accommodations were obtained at the hotel, which afforded us a night of quiet repose, preparatory to the long and arduous journey on the following day.

LETTER XCIII.

DEPARTURE FROM DOMO D'OSSOLA-PASSAGE OF THE SIMPLON -DESCRIPTION OF THE ROAD-BRIDGE OF CREVOLA-ALPINE SCENERY- -OLD PATH-MONKS-REFUGES-HAMLETSAVALANCHES-VILLAGE OF SIMPLON-VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNTAIN-GLACIERS OF SWITZERLAND-TORRENTS OF THE GANTER AND SALTINE-ARRIVAL AT BRIGUE.

October, 1826.-We rose at 4 o'clock, on the morning of the 11th, and took breakfast by candle-light. Our Savoyard here reinforced his team with four additional horses and a postillion; but notwithstanding the vigilance of the two guides, the streets were so dark that in going out of the town, the coach ran against the wall and detained us, till the bell of the Cathedral rang the knell of five o'clock in our ears. the stillness of night, the roar of distant waters was heard around us, and the shadowy forms of mountains were indistinctly traced, by being thrown against the sky. The twinkling of a few stars, emerging occasionally from transient clouds, gave promise of a favourable day.

In

At dawn we reached the entrance of the gallery or terrace, which spans the Alps for a distance of forty miles; hewn the greater part of the way through mountains of granite to the width of twenty-five feet; supported by walls some.

times two hundred feet in height; hanging frequently upon perpendicular ledges; piercing a dozen impassable barriers of rock; and bridging twenty-five torrents. Such are some of the features of this stupendous work, of the grandeur of which it is impossible to convey an adequate idea.

After the pacification of Europe, the Austrian soldiers inc their passage of the Alps, to deluge Italy with other swarms of Goths from the north, broke off with sledge-hammers the e tops of nearly all the columns lining this road, and attempt- | ed to demolish the bridges! But they found the monuments, like the fame of Napoleon, too indestructible and eternal to be prostrated by the hands of such barbarians, who have merely left traces of their infamy, to excite the scorn and detestation of travellers. Had the Emperor of Austria and King of Sardinia the least respect for their own characters, they would immediately set about obliterating every vestige of such brutal acts of violence; but instead of taking this course, they neglect other necessary repairs, and seem determined to hasten the destruction of a work, which perpetuates the glory of a name they cordially hate.

Had Napoleon left no other memorials of his greatness, this monument alone would have made him immortal; for he has inscribed his glory upon the eternal rocks of the Alps, which neither torrents nor avalanches, the ravages of time nor the rage of kings, can wholly obliterate. The geological formation of the Italian side of the Simplon is primitive rock, and the opposite side, chiefly secondary, consisting of schist and argillaceous slate. Something like a ton of gunpowder was consumed in blowing through the solid masses of granite. Three thousand men were employed from 1801 till 1805, in the execution of this imperial project.

The scenery at the entrance of the terrace, in the approach from Italy, comports with the grandeur of the work, and impresses the mind with feelings of awe. I recoiled with a thrill of momentary dread from the congregated terrors at the opening of the gorge, consisting of enormous masses of granite, piled together in the rudest manner, and the gigantic works of art, hewn from the shattered rocks. The ruins of the mountains looked as if another race of Titans had been warring against heaven, and labouring to shake the adamantine throne of the Omnipotent. Every circumstance seemed to conspire in heightening the sublimity of the scene. The day-star still hung upon the tops of the Alps, and the blushes of the east had just begun to redden the glaciers. Enough

f morning twilight remained, to throw over objects a artial obscurity, and to magnify their proportions. The roar f waters, sent back in a thousand echoes from the hills, was eafening. From the bridge of the Diverio, which is a coossal structure, several hundred feet in length, resting on rches as massive and durable as the precipices with which hey are incorporated, we looked down on the sea-green torent, tumbling and dashing and thundering among the fragments of the mountains in the chasm below. On its left bank near its junction with the Toccia, in the hamlet of Crevola, is a large iron foundery, the fires of which had probaoly been kept up during the night, and were now blazing from the furnaces and glaring through the windows. To recur to a classical image, it appeared as though Vulcan and his Cyclops might be here at work, forging arms for a new war of the gods.

Deserting the secluded, romantic, and peaceful vale, which had been pursued from Lake Maggiore, we entered that of Diverio, lined with rugged precipices; narrow, lonely, and and wild; noisy with descending floods; and shaggy with alpine horrors. Before us rose peak after peak, heaving their wintry tops into the skies, and now tinged of a roseate hue by the beams of a bright morning. The depths of the gorge, (for it can hardly be called a vale,) and the banks of the torrent, which the road constantly follows to the heights of the Simplon, are skirted with fir, weeping-birch, alder, willow, rosodendron, and other species of mountain plants. Surprising as it may seem, the little alluvial patches, upon which the snows above shoot their avalanches, and pour icy waters, were still green, and in many places enamelled with autumnal flowers. The solitude of the glen, unbroken, save only by the music of the elements, would be appalling, if the mind were not transported in a delirium of ecstacy, and lost to all ordinary emotions. In the enthusiasm of the moment, it forgets its little thoughts and cares, absorbed in contemplating the matchless grandeur of the scene.

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pass, with all its rugged sublimity, is said to be less astounding than some other chasms in the Alps. It is, however, as stupendous in its features as I have any desire to witness, infinitely transcending in the reality the mean combinations which my imagination had formed.

In a mile or two after crossing the bridge, which constitutes the noble threshold of the terrace, we passed an enor

mous column, laying with its intended pedestal by the side of the road. It was hewn from the neighbouring precipices, under the auspices of Napoleon, and designed to embellish the Arch of the Simplon at Milan. Its dimensions are something like fifty feet in length, and fifteen in circumference. In the act of rolling from the quarry it was unfortunately broken in two; and its colossal and prostrate fragments, arrested before reaching the point of destination, and exciting surprise that so much strength could be broken, furnish to the traveller a forcible emblem of the fallen fortunes of the imperial Exile, whose power had become too disproportionate and unwieldy, to support its own weight, substantial as were the materials of which it was composed.

Along the rocks overhanging the turbulent stream, traces of the old pathway, which led through these deep solitudes, before the road of the Simplon was constructed, are at intervals still marked by the eye.* It sometimes traversed steeps and dizzy precipices, round projections of the mountains, and on natural terraces of rock, where the foot of the shepherd or chamios would scarcely venture to tread. Yet a French army, characterized by the same spirit of enthusiasm and intrepidity, which led Napoleon to encounter the snows of St. Bernard, climbed the icy summits of the Simplon, and marched through this gorge into Italy, bridging the fissures of glaciers and chasms in the mountains with their spears. At the solitary hamlet of Isella, buried in wilds which no other troops would apparently have the hardihood to enter, they built a strong fortress, to guard the natural fastnesses; and we passed two casernes, which were erected for the accommodation of the garrison and army.

But these alpine solitudes have not been traversed alone by the footsteps of soldiers. Christianity has here erected the cross, and philanthropy has reared monuments, which call forth a tear of gratitude from the traveller, for such active, unostentatious, and disinterested benevolence. Before

* This rude tract across the Alps was blocked up, and in some places wholly obliterated, by the shock of the great earthquake, in the year 1755, by which Lisbon was buried in ruins, and which reached not only the Highlands of Scotland, as I have already stated, but even our own remote shores. What must have been the violence of a concussion, which could shake at the same moment the Pyrenese, the Alps, the Grampians, and White Hills, at the distance of thousands of miles from each other!" Tremendous masses of granite were here rent asunder, and tumbled into the beds of torrents.

great road of the Simplon was constructed, monks had owed up the defile to the very top of the mountain, and built le shelters upon the rocks, where the benighted wanderer, these inhospitable regions, might take refuge from the rms by which he was pelted. Little oratories and shrines, ng along the path, remind the passenger of that faith, ich could inspire such heroic ardour. Be it superstition, be it an emanation from heaven, blessed be the principle t led to such acts of humanity.

To the convents and hospices, originally commenced by lesiastics, Mr. Stockalper, a wealthy philanthropist, whose ne deserves the celebrity and immortality of a Howard, led several buildings of a more lofty, substantial, and nfortable kind. One of them, standing near the boundas of Switzerland, is eight stories high, constructed of ne, and neatly finished, with the appendage of a chapel. hers are crowned with Gothic towers, rising from the deeprecesses of the Alps. But they were not raised from tives of ostentatious charity; for they were planted in se secluded retreats, where they are scarcely distinguishafrom the grey crags that surround them, long before Naleon opened the passage of the Simplon, and where no eye uld mark them, save that of the wayfaring man, who vened to scale ramparts of eternal frost.

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A third class of refuges rose simultaneously with the comtion of the road, built and maintained by the government. ey are scattered at short intervals, throughout the whole tent of the route, and exhibit the number of each upon the We paused at one of them. It had two inhabitants, old man and his assistant, both rude in aspect as the wilrness in which they are buried. They informed us, that ere was not a human being within many miles of them, and it they live here entirely alone. The large structure has o old-fashioned hearths, on one of which a cheerful fire is blazing, with benches placed before it for the accommotion of travellers. A coarse kind of bread was obtained, th which our Savoyard fed his horses, standing by their ads, and partaking of the same loaf himself.

The lone and gloomy hamlets of Divedro, Isella, San arco, Gondo, and Simplon, straggled up this savage pass, terior to the modern improvements. What should have d the hardy mountaineers into wastes of rock and snow, or w they subsist, it is impossible to say; for there is little