the "Mountain Brutus" drew his bow on his taskmaster. A plain, small chapel commemorates it. Around a sharp angle to the left was the altar-heath where the Grutli met at midnight and swore the oath which gave freedom to Switzerland. Various other chapels, of so-called Christian architecture, were to be seen, vacillating in style between a Buddhist pagoda and a German barn, their deformity presenting no small induce ments to the patriot ghosts who haunt their vicinity to turn infidel. Nothing around is exactly classic ground, though much is enriched by history, and all is rank with romance. There exists no soil elsewhere, at the same time, so teeming and so fresh with associations. Innovation has never yet touched one grove with her destroying sceptre. Here spread broad fragments of sylvan tracts which the sun would in vain interpenetrate; brakes and bowers which the plough can never successfully invade. Waterloo is a cornfield, and Art has already tattooed its surface with trophies. Jemappes is a furnace; Hastings is blotted out; the engulfing lake at Austerlitz has to-day no trace; and where is Valmy?-where is Marengo? Even the Revolutionary vestiges of our own young country are "gone glimmering," so few remain. But these hoary mountains still overlook, as they have always overlooked, the same, whether lapped in lightning or in suntide, the spellbound scene at their base. They seem, leaning in their neglected grandeur, like giant tombstones, the ivied mementoes of an unremembered race,-and to hallow their premises from obtruding change. Time may here create, but she cannot destroy. The spirit of the Past, like the echo around, leads a charmed life. Through the broad gulf of atmosphere towered the remoter mountains. At intervals was seen the ethereal air-line, blanched with snow, and intersected with clouds. Lower down, the mountains were now cloven into lawny dells winding among the high forests, and now shattered into toppling precipices, from which the slender streams dangled like pure packthread in the shade, or changed to scarfs of bright, various dyes in the sun. Still lower, on the gentler slopes, terraces appear, one above another, like stairs, each with its parterre of box borders, sand walks, and lattice-work. These, and the adjacent châlets, which, although very low, have prodigiously lofty shingle roofs, loaded with stone to prevent their being blown away by the wind, are scattered, at wide distances, toward Lucerne, being chiefly the summer retreats of wealthy vignerons. But, in their very rear, as if overhanging in mockery, his abutment covered with pine groves, whose obeliskine forms of intense green pierce his gray shadow,-rose Mount Pilatus, empinnacling a lake. Here, according to an old Talmudical yarn, Pilate, soul-stricken after his great condemnation, fled to terminate his existence. He threw himself into the watery chasm en haut; and thence issued a monumental cloud, which has since then spread and receded, but which rarely departs. It is called "Pilate's Hat;" and no disposition of a kingly crown was ever watched with such jealous interest as is this weather-oracle. I saw the ashen-coloured cloud; but I vouch for no further facts concerning the story of this EMPEDOCLES OF CHRISTIANITY. Not even the brazen slippers remain. me. vation of Nature was fast running to rank reverie. How long I might have remained "silent upon a peak" is uncertain, had not a sudden snort aroused It was Vaurien, fast asleep. A well-aimed toss of my canteen at his head extinguished this sommeil du matin, and a better-aimed discharge of its contents, gurgling past his œsophagus, brought him standing. Kirschwasser never failed to serve him as a dose of good will, or to dispel the most incredible fatigue. These guides have been mule-drivers from time immemorial, under the Roman prefects, the Ostrogoths, the Huns, the Saracens; and, in later days, have pioneered for Massena. Time and travellers have not improved them in any respect, save rascality and love of kirsch. "Vite! vite, Mosieu! Let us gain the top, or all will be gone!" "What gone?-the top?" "No, but the rooms and viands. Laggards get nothing warm, and the wind is a blast from the devil's own pipe. Will that suit Mosieu's complaint?" "Hum! do you think of nothing but bed and board, Vaurien?” "C'est bien assez," said he, with a shrug. "Mosieu loves entusymusy, mais il faut vivre:-c'est l'habitude. One had better sleep than dream wide awake. Croyez-moi, I have not studied mountains for nothing. Have learned that the more provisions and less baggage the better; a donkeyride is good for melancholy; no folly like physic that's a travelling constitution, and, above all, plenty of kirsch." And he lapsed his catechism into a chanson-à-boire. We trudged on our traversely-threading path, Vaurien vocalizing, and his master yet more idly moralizing. The path, overhung with trellised vines, contrasted here and there with the fastdiminishing foliage of pine. Onward we trudged, round ugly corners which flank the insuperable wall. Onward we trudged, through new phases of ascent, now through a gloomy belt of landscape, past stones immensely massive, jutting out from each other, or struggling through labyrinthine glades, rifts, shattered masses of precipitous ruin, and chasms rent by earthquake; but now, in more pleasing succession, lingering along ferny coverts, amid the rustling of leaves and the sound of water, the faint drops of a fountain, or gazing adown vales fringed with trees, which, bowing their fair heads, prevented the beamy spear of noon from piercing beneath. And, from their extending branches, Nature's choristers sent forth many a lovely lay. From on high the rippling waters descended, in alternate rivulet and cascade, like the stream of angels on the ladder of Jacob's dream, to visit the sleeping lake. Suddenly, the amphitheatre was closed from view. We were entering a deep and hall-like pass, bordered on both sides by perpendicular rocks, broken into the wildest forms of fantastic magnificence. Beyond, just past its outer threshold, lay, broadly strewn, as though some comet had there been wrecked, the confracti rudera mundi. A narrow lane has been cleared through their midst, spanning which, there stands, stupendous and dreary, a most remarkable arch, formed by the fall of a Titanic rock being arrested by a halfcrushed column of similar formation immediately opposite. Yet so spacious is the gap beneath, The cavalcade had passed on, and my obser- that a triumphal army might pass through with their standards. Its outer compartment is sculptured in deep relief by the harrowing finger of time and tempest. Overhead are terrible rifts, like windows, through which flashed the light into black arcades; while trees hung totteringly, in the act of ruin, were not their roots gnarled into the tenacious marble. Around lay enormous collections of the same material, resembling the shattered and shapeless capitals and cornices, loaded with marred tracery, which cumber the vicinity of Rome. The "half-way house," though in reality a little higher, is here designated. About this region is obtained the finest view of Mount Righi itself-the juxtaposition of its triple summit, and the stormy outline of Pilatus finely contrasting. One may, if he pleases, go on climbing alp after alp, until the horizon is seen, blank and limitless, and the head turns giddy and the ground fails under his feet, but it is not there that he sees the peculiar nature of the elevation he stands upon. But lo! to right and left, what tokens of humanity are these? Glancing at the slanting rocks, and upon their very pinnacles, I descried the eidolon of Christianity, the insignia of Catholicism, the Crucifixion, the painting of the passion, the holy Madonna; the rudest production of the chisel and easel, perhaps, but which, taken from the studio, and niched in such a gallery as this, look down upon the gazer with a certain alienated grandeur. The miracles of Raffael, in the high court of Roman holiness, are not more devoutly impressive than are these mysterious chaplets, thus inaccessibly enshrined, and made sacred from profanation by danger. The Vatican has been sacked, and its treasures rudely pillaged; but the rashest iconoclast was never hardy enough to desecrate the penates of Mount Righi. Fit emblems, are they not, of a faith which, however matured in disaster, is still buoyant with enterprise; which, with all its knowledge, "knows no such word as fail?" Vaurien's delicately hinged knee sank, and he dropped, as if shot on the wing, when we reached the Madonna, while his "Malbrok s'en va-t-en guerre" gave place to an Ave. "It strikes, me, Vaurien, that your genuflections might here, if anywhere, be deemed supererogatory," I could not help saying, as my Sancho caught up, at a puffing pace. "Your legs must, in all conscience, have enough work to-day, in the honest service of Mammon: methinks the sturdiest Franciscan, in such a case, might appease his scruples by counting his beads en passant." "Mosieu! does Mosieu suppose that I carry a rosary? Mais non-et je suis plus que Franciscan -je suis Français. Does Mosieu suppose I bow only because it is my devoir to do so? Mosieu, a Frenchman always bows: it is comme il faut." As he enunciated this doctrine with what the Italians call a pavoneggiarsi, or peacock strut, I felt that, like Agrippa, I was answered. When did a man ever lose by politeness? as Turenne said, when a cannon-ball brushed his hair during a bow. When did a guide fail to get the better of his employer? Nothing remained but to try the ultima ratio-which was rather an improve. ment on that of Louis XIV.-kirsch. Come, Vau rien, another drink! With the alertness of a lizard, did he spring to the summons. The next moment an empty canteen was rattling down a rock. But its contents were drained on no desert sand. A guide's | stomach is not seldom a sponge; but his brain is never a Sahara. Vaurien's upper crust of dulness was now soaked through, and before ten minutes had elapsed, every organ in his brain was in a complete state of revolution. 66 Mosieu, did votre altesse see the top of that old crag, tumbled above our path down there, looking, for all the world, like a truncated Bologna sausage. We poor garçons must say our peixes prieres at the prie Dieu close by, and drop a batzen -or we shall have the old sausage on our heads. Et voila ma religion." "Sapristi! mon ami. I have, then, some trepidation for my own head, to say nothing of my chapeau and old Quito." "Oh non, de tout. For seven francs a-day the guide always remembers his master and mule;" rejoined he, with perfect bonnefoi. Inimitable guides! can they not say with Harold, "Where rise high mountains there to them are friendsTM And friends in need, they prove too. "May the God of your mother bless you!" cried a voice, and I recognised the presence of the mendicant rabble, offering a hecatomb of flowers and pebbles. They were chiefly female peasants, neither lame, halt, nor blind, but rather frestr looking; though, as Vaurien remarked, their con dition would have been ameliorated by less liberty and more soap. They spring into daylight from the neighbouring chlaets, each of which is caverned within barren rocks, that, encircling, threaten to swallow them up. The peasantry of the valleys have always some peculiarity of costume, graceful or ungraceful; but these Lotophagi exist in a savage state. If the Greeks rightly named Nature mother, then the universal parent, one would think, has conducted herself in regard to these grace-abandoned creatures, like a perfect Bruin. Upon them, devolves the principal labour; the antisalic customs of Switzerland permitting women to meddle with all the machinery of life. In this canton, indeed, non-exemption does not extend quite so ungallantly far, as in the Grison district, where I have occasionally seen a female yoked to a plough, in acquiescent conjunction with a cow and a tall draught hog,-all three co-ope rating, apparently, with the utmost mutual good understanding. Yet, even in this comparatively civilized quarter, they are, in a pastoral way, required to attend to everything-save their toilettes. Their long hair trails in greasy strings, unwashed and uncombed, over their faces. Their children were just such impish Manads as from such mothers, and shoeless and stockingless nurture, might be supposed. After shocking Vaurien's Genevese delicacy, by challenging him to kiss one rag-garnished Hamadryad, with a verdigris brass bolt shot through the knot of her hair, I succeeded in making a silver gate through the scarecrow settlement. The next bastion that opposed us, was the enclosure of the mountain chapel, with a longwaisted female saint suspended over the door. A few knights of the Alpenstock, who had selected this spot for their halt, were mounted upan the rustic tombstone, with eyes glued to the windows, examining the interior, with as lively a curiosity, as if they had "forgotten what the inside of a church was made of;"-an bypothesis much more probable than strange. In their rear, the usual congregation of petitioning patriarchs were let loose from bridles, chairs from bearers; a and boys were doing homage (not to the lawful phalanstere of beggars were ransacking sundry negsaints), with the usual intonation of nasal recita-lected hampers; a troop of knapsacked pedestrians, tive. "Voila la Chapelle," sang one, as we approached. Poor fellow, he regarded it as the Palladium of Righi; and, truth to say, it is the very rock of refuge upon which the Righi Pauperdom is based, But, "skoal to the Northland, skoal!" as the skeleton said. A new scene breaks on the view. We had reached Kaltesbad. This shows us, at once, into a new phasis. The Kaltesbad, or lover hotel, is a hydropathicohospitalico-milky-punchy species of tabernaculum. It is likewise a mountaineering institute ;- that is to say, an asylum for young gentlemen afflicted with that peculiar, and most unfortunate description of lunacy-the mountain-mania. Thither resort numbers of those ingenuous youths, who, living on men and mutton, propose to go in training as mountaineers, and who at length become the Orsons of civilization. They eat voracious repasts, lie down with the lamb, and start off on a lark with the day, to vie with each other in the magnitude of their excruciating excursions. They construct tree bridges across chasms, and, under the genial breath of a gale, N. E. by N., enjoy a showerbath beneath cascades. Anon, with a Selkirk alertness, they learn, dogless, to catch a chamois by the hind leg, before breakfast, and to gnaw half a dozen steaks fresh quivering from his side. The rock-built walls, around, which make Switzerland a prison to those endowed with less agility, they laugh at, and climb like burglars. A precipice is no more in the face of their alacrity, than five bars to the high-mettled hunter. Rocks, streams, hedges and ditches, indeed, have no existence in the horizon of their providence; though an occasional dislocated shoulder or broken neck affords an interstice of repose in their impetuous mode of life. This is the curious sect of youths who, after their calenture has abated, and their term of probation has expired, deign to descend into the demesnes of enlightened society, promenading at a kangaroo pace, in boots like barrels, and armed with portable billets of wood (invariably cut with their own jack-knife, from some death-impending tree), which they force into the vocabulary, under the category "walking-stick." It is needless to say that these Esau-Hyperions are especial pets of Jane Bull, who patronises their capillary bosquets with infinite grace and success. 'Tis pleasant to know that such things are; and under such auspices, who would not be a neophyte? But at present there were other characters set forth. I have no well-stocked menagerie to let loose for my reader; and so the scene cannot be reproduced. The march has already been compared to the "Pilgrim's Progress;" here, then, was the variously peopled "Vanity Fair;" -a tableau for Bunyan or Boiardo to portray. A multitude had sprung up like mushrooms. The cavalcade in which I have had the honour of ranking, had here effected a junction with another advanced corps, and they were bivouacked together in a consentaneous confusion, never paralleled since the camp of Agramont. A prairie korall, and a Chinese court, the two extremes of humanity, seemed to have declared union for the nonce, at this Kaltesbad masque. Ladies and gentlemen were strewed in groups, in most admired disorder; rosy, roaring children, were running round; mules each of whom might have been taken for a generalissimo from his attendant staff, were removing a load from the outer to the inner man; bottles were bursting, women were screaming; and, strewed over the area like débris of departing chaos, were scrap-books, scraps of cold turkey, flutes and accor deons, camp-stools, towels, fruit and flowers, sauces, blankets, bonnets, spy-glasses, cheeses, chowders, eggs, soda, metheglin,matches, pipes, hams, lemons, shawls,canteens of molasses, baversacks, and handkerchiefs of beef, patés de fois gras, which itinerant geese were pecking at; music-books, the Nouvelle Heloise, bound with Don Juan; Alpenstocks and vivandiere's barrels-all jostling, rolling and tossing with a rushing abandon, which could only find its fit accompaniment in the hoarse tones of a stray-keyed hand-organ that ground dismal Ranz des Vaches in the very midst of the mêlée. Ranged round at circular intervals, their heads hid under expansive chip hats, their feet dangling over the brink of the broad shelf on which we were, erect, as to their bodies, sat half a dozen misses sketching the amphitheatre. Their faces were averted from the company, but the aspect presented by their backs, chips and sedentary uniformity, suggested neither more nor less than the idea of half-driven-in tacks, stuck along the edge of a dry goods box. It is singular-the potency which clear atmosphere and natural elevation possess for affecting young ladies with the cacoethes pingendi, or painter's colic. In truth, it was an auctioneer's paradise; and the succession of these observations of mine was commensurate to the celerity with which Peter Funk might have described "the lot." But Vaurien outstripped me. The practised rapidity of his coup d'ail would have distanced Daguerre, In one second he had caught a glimpse of the Symposium; in another, he had caught my eye, with a look which seemed to say, "Voilà le véritable pittoresque!" in the third infinitesimal of time, he was streaking round like a turbot in a tornado, and making free warren of larder and cellar. A copious contribution from Ceres and Bacchus is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient in rustic amusements, as is demonstrated (superfluously, indeed) by the example of the immortal gods; and Vaurien had enough sagacity to know that wayfarers up the Righi, as well as Olympus and Helicon, were wont to adhibit fierce potations to their luncheon. The advent of a new cavalier made, of course, no impression upon anybody except the beggars. While looking around to "choose a ground and take my rest," they rose en masse, a grisly cohort, successfully challenging my right to such a privilege. At length, mine host of the Kaltesbad, who said "J'ai l'honneur de vous saluer" at every word, brought me a subsidy, and immunity to continue my contemplation. My breakfast companions had all here effected a réunion. Little Gaspar and his papa were just arrived; and the former-poor little fellow!— gave proof, by his deep-heaved respiration, that his christening was no misnomer. Ah! none save those who have struggled up a mountain know the luxury of breathing. The first voice which became distinct amid the din was that of Mrs. G. You will recollect she was the stout Britoness who made the gloomy "goat's- | milk" prediction at breakfast. Just now, she was looking extremely faint and swollen. Her complexion, between her mouth and ear, was almost maroon. occasional draughts of white Swiss wine, a process for which the taught contortions of his mouth indicated no keen gusto. A crumb of cheese had accidentally come in tickling contiguity with his larynx, at the juncture which his malicious interlocutor had selected for his appeal. So, whilst, by dint of coughing, clearing, and convulsing, he was racking the refractory atom we passed yon slowly upward, I have found leisure to write the above description. At length the voice burst its fleshy bondage, as follows: "Guide! good guide!" said she, fracturing the small of an egg against a large stone, " arn't we more than half way yet?" "Exactly, Madam; since shoulder below" "Dear! dear! how's that? what a distorted mountain! You don't mean to say, now, that its shoulder is half way to its foot?" Hoot, hoot, mon! a bonnie camparisoon, forsooth! as ye wid campare this sorry metel o' mine wi' a breesk Shetland poony; as ye wid campare the spairkling mauntain-dew o' Ben Nevis wi' sic acid brewage as this mither o fall, gie me the Coralyn; for a londskip, gie me "La, mem, that's nothing!" interposed an elbow-acquaintance; “just think of its taking you half a day to ride from its foot to its spur!" "Well, I don't fancy any such misshapenveenegar" (holding up the bottle). “For a wa'ermountains," rejoined Mrs. G―, helping herself to a pitcher of beer; "give me a handsome mountain, like that one in Italy-Saint Somebody or 'nother-all hewn out into a bold statue :that's what I call taste. Oh! you don't know; you can see it all so nice, without going up and killing yourself. Mr. Owlton said the view was even finer from the bottom than the top. You can see all its parts from the bottom. Mr. Owlton went and sat on the Saint's shoulder; really, Mr. Owlton put me quite in mind of Gulliver's Travels. Mr. Owlton's coat wouldn't have made the Saint an epaulette. Mr. Owlton, don't you fancy you see yourself on the Saint's shoulder?" But Mr. Owlton (who was no other than blue specs) was not at this moment "fancy free" to carve shoulders out of memory. Apparently, all his ideas had for their object a very different department of the human anatomy,-the stomach. His eyes were protruding almost in contact with their glasses, as he bolted down little Gaspar's six hard eggs, one after the other, without pepper or salt, seasoning them afterwards with a lusty pull at the nearest bottle he could lay hands upon. Little Gaspar looked quietly on, without comment, though he wagged beyond its bluelipped portals a most enormous red tongue, which seemed to petition for employment. "Mr. MacShindig, how would you compare Mont Rhigi with Ben Lomond ?" The querist was a young man of about twentyfive, with a merry red face, sleek head, white teeth, blue eyes, and a gentle Albanian tuft upon his upper lip. His succinct person was completely attired in a suit of white corduroys. Nobody knew him; he was attached to no particular party; no one seemed to know even how he had come there. And yet, thanks to a joyous and tractable manner, a few petits soins which he bestowed around, and, above all, by an unstickling impudence, he had contrived to lier conversation with almost everybody, and, what is yet more singular, to impress everybody with the notion that he was acquainted with everybody else. Mr. MacShindig was a Scotchman,―et preterea mihil. If these words fail to convey an intelligible idea, it is the reader's fault,—not mine. But if I add that he was of a long body, encased in galligaskins, a gaunt visage, a straight, wide mouth, a huger nose, and bright cheek-bones, which always seemed to reflect the last rays of the setting sun, —if I add this key to his appearance,-conception has no excuse for being at fault. At the moment of the last question, he sat masticating fromage de Brie, and tempering its aridity with ; "and does he really say so?" "Yes, Madam; and Charles Lamb made a curious observation upon Caledonian character. Do you remember, Mr. MacShindig, where be says that one can never cry halves to anything that turns up in a Scotchman's company. A mere libel, I'm convinced. I'll trouble you for that last slice of cheese, sir." So startled was Mr. MacShindig by this unlooked-for argumentum ad hominem so rhetorically put, that he suffered his thin bottle to fall, and its detested contents gurgled out in a bile-coloured brook at his feet. "Hoot, mon! sin' ye mak nae proveesion for yesel', an' willna' peermit anither to enjoy his ane, tak it, an' weelcoom, an' the bootel, too. Ye mun be mickle improvident to carry naething in yer breeks. An' I ken ye'll feel queasy enco", whin ye feenish that cheese," muttered he, in an undertone. I turned again to the other group. Gaspar, behold the Glaziers, while I eat this wing," said blue specs, soothingly, his mouth full, his back towards the sublime objects specified. Gaspar continued to wag the protruding feature of his discourse, but without averting his eyes from the parental mouth, which he had been watching with the avidity of a pointer. 6 "The Glaziers!" repeated Corduroys, whom nothing had escaped, glancing, at the same time. toward a sister pedestrian; "the Glaziers! Oh! true; distance lends enchantment, particularly when one looks 'as through a glass, darkly. If Campbell had studied optics as well as poetry. he would certainly have made some foot-note remarks on the visual effects of a glazed eye!” "I mean the mare de glass," sputtered blue specs, with great wrath, and plunging his hand into his pocket with a desperation that rattled some mineral specimens which little Gaspar had been collecting. "Isinglass in quartz! Save us, blue-eyed goddess!" shrieked Corduroys, in affected terror. darting behind the young lady. "You will not allow a man who lives in a glass house to brain me with stones, will you ?" Here my heart began to yawn. Like Laurence Sterne, I was forced to turn to another part of the, picture. "Is that the Rapid Reuss?" inquired Mrs. G―, who had sent for a fresh pitcher of beer, and was employing the moments of expectancy in "committing observations;" "dear me, how like a frightened snake it runs!" "The rivers of Switzerland," interposed a young lady who was mixing colours on her palette, "the rivers of Switzerland rush to their embouchure with an energy evidently born in the nursery of the Avalanche. The seasons set no mark to gauge their ceaseless flow. In the parching summer they are most exuberant." And, having made this gratuitous announcement in a rapid voice, whilst all were yet looking round to discover whence the unknown tones proceeded, she ceased, and fell to painting. The conversation reverted. "But what makes the rivers so green?" demanded blue specs. "Oh, sir," answered a self-relying little demoiselle, with that vivid suggestiveness for which young unmarried ladies are celebrated, "that's easily explained. It's the malachite bed below, glancing through. Mamma, don't you remember those magnificent doors of malachite at the Crystal Palace, that you were so angry when father wouldn't buy one for your boudoir? They are dug from foreign parts, you know." without much pains, he succeeded in apprising, by gestures, almost all the company of his dissatisfaction. Raw cotton was not forthcoming, but a sportsman from Canton Vaud offered an ingenious substitute, in the form of two waddings strongly impregnated with powder, which he coolly ex tracted from his double-barrelled fowling-piece, and proffered to MacShindig, with an unexcited, but stern courtesy, that would seem to bode little good to its object. But the Scot was actuated by prejudices, too violently anti-Helvetic, to admit of his profiting by a simple suggestion. It may be questioned whether any hint milder than a bullet, could have worked its way to his brain. He continued a variety of uneasy symptoms, expressive of the same species of disdain which Halevy evinced on hearing the Negro Minstrels-symptoms which appeared aggravated instead of mellowed, by the succession of alternating drinks. Presently he gave an impatient bound and made for his wallet-to draw forth a bagpipe. After clearing his throat with a long preliminary pull at the bell glass, he stood up and demanded audience. "Leddies an' gentlemen-I ken wi' submeesion, that I be an inadequeete museceean o' the nooble anstrument wi' whilk I am aboot to regale yer lugs. Boot mak allooance for defeeciency, its deep veeritable tones shud pleed me muckle grace wi' a' who hae taste enoo' to detest yon wud-cow-hoorn. Can ony one deny that the loovliest muse o' the nine must be dispaireged by sic cow an` bull sairenadin' as a Rants de Vosh? Can ony ane deny that a bogpeepe is the psalmody o' soond? Leedies, let us restair the muse's sweetness an' yer ane wi' a thrilling air; the bogpeepe was made on Ben Nevis, an' it strikes on the same key as the music o' the spheres." "Weel, but, me daft young meestress, ye na do ill to mind that the maylacheete be in the Muscoovete depeertment, noot the Sweess. But gang alang; dinna' ye mind sic sma' deeference, sin' ye mak nae distinction between a green door an' a green bed." The Highlander was greatly exacerbated by the numerous rigs which Corduroys had lately run upon him, aud, though naturally the most With this introduction, he struck up such a benign of men, had sought a retaliation some- caterwauling, that all hands were clapped upon all where, which, compensating after the analogy of ears like the stops on a flute. The sportsman a triangular duel, might restore his ruffled com- glared. An infuriated Ranz des Vachian sprang placency. This was the explanation of his cap-up, brandishing a cheese-knife, and with a tomatiousness towards the young lady, whose only offence was her manifestation of a tempting-too tempting-naïveté. He was now appeased. Not so the daft young meestress" of his audacious soubriquet, whose discomfiture had instantly dammed the flow of her loquaciousness, and for a moment deepened her aspect to a "grass green" deep as the "Prater's" of Vienna. Dinna ye mind, ye goggle-eyed gander!" screamed she, swallowing a mortified sob: "and who asked your advice? I guess I ken the deference 'tween a Scotch green goose and a gentleman." "Vivida! vivida!" urged the matron, who had also assumed an unrelaxable frown-"vivida, if you had hushed when I pinched you, you would never have brought this on yourself." The reader must not complain if the entretien of a Swiss fête champêtre is more spirited than elegant. Such is life amid nature, where many meet and meet to part. The arbiters of taste and ton sometimes wear a strange incog. Meanwhile the Ranz des Vaches groaned and whistled from the organ in brisk competition with buzz, chatter, and rattle, which rang unceasingly. The Scotchman indulged in dismal sneers whenever any one paid a passing compliment to the national composition, and would make no concession to the real feeling which some of the natives testified. At first he contented himself with demanding raw cotton to stop his ears with. Not hawk flourish, plunged it through and through the music-swollen bag-an operation which caused the "auncient air o' Scots wee Hae" to evaporate into an untimely and untuneful "sough." Yet MacShindig continued-with cracking cheeks, and flashing eyes, unconscious of interruption. His inspiration was upon him, and, like that of the "Ancient Mariner" must have vent;-and so it did, until a huge hand, with the force of an orchestral clash, descended on his back. The truth was then apparent; MacShindig was gloriously drunk. The sour wine, the bitter ale, and the ill-concocted punch which he had imbibed, stirred by the Dulcamara melodies which ensued, had done their work. He was transferred to the custody of a guide. "Jane! Jane!" called, invitingly, a red-cheeked dame, "come quick, and take a draught of this nice, blue milk." "Thank you, mamma," returned her elated pet, "not I; this gentleman is mixing me such a nice glass of claret and soda." "Mercy on us!-didn't I tell you never to taste sour wine? Come, this instant, and drink your milk. The foaming spring of innocence," continued she, with an explanatory smile to Corduroys. "It's your true pastoral elixir-the only refreshment without money and without pricefresh and free. Pray, sir, won't you partake?" |