1

Fahrenheit for every 550 feet of ascent, uniformly for all heights;
so that the making of a good cup of tea on the summit of a lofty
mountain may be not only a friendly but a philosophical occupa-
tion. After an hour of great enjoyment, they renewed their
journey in a cheerful mood, in order to descend the lengthened
stretch of ice which lay before them. When fairly abreast of
Mont Collon, the guide startled the very air by a wild cry,
rousing the rarely awakened echoes of those stupendous preci-
pices, which sent back the sound in still more fantastic tones.
He stated that this echo was well known to the smugglers, and
that the reverberation of the mountain served to guide them in
foggy weather— in a track,' adds Mr. Forbes, 'which must then
be singularly perilous, from the great breadth and monotony of
the glacier, and the number of branches into which it divides, any
one of which might easily be mistaken for another.'

But while thus amusing themselves with merry shoutings, and
listening to the answering voices of those viewless spirits of the
elements,' their attention was suddenly attracted to a far different
matter.

A dark ohject was descried on the snow to our left, just under the precipices of Mont Collon. We were not yet low enough to have entered on the ice, but were still on snow. This proved to be the body of a man fully clothed, fallen with his head in the direction in which we were going. From the appearance of the body as it lay, it might have been presumed to be recent; but when it was raised, the head and face were found to be in a state of frightful decay, and covered with blood, evidently arising from an incipient thaw, after having remained perhaps for a twelvemonth perfecily congealed. The clothes were quite entire and uninjured, and being hard frozen, still protected the corpse beneath. It was evident that an unhappy peasant had been overtaken in a storm, probably of the previous year, and had lain there covered with snow during the whole winter and spring, and that we were now in the month of August the first travellers who had passed this way and ascertained his fate. The hands were gloved, and in the pockets, in the attitude of a person maintaining the last glow of heat, and the body being extended on the snow, which was pretty steep, it appeared that he had been hurrying towards the valley when his strength was exhausted, and he lay simply as he fell.

• The effect upon us all was electric, and had not the sun shone forth in its full glory, and the very wilderness of eternal snow seemed gladdened under the serenity of such a summer's day as is rare at these heights, we should certainly have felt a deeper thrill arising from the sense of personal danger. As it was, when we had recovered our first surprise, and interchanged our expressions of sympathy for the poor traveller, and gazed with awe on the disfigured relics of one who had so lately been in the same plight with ourselves, we turned and surveyed, with a stronger sense of sublimity than before, the desolation by which

F 2

we

we were surrounded, and became still more sensible of our isolation from human dwellings, human help, and human sympathy—our loneliness with nature, and, as it were, the more immediate presence of God.'

p. 280.

The strong guide of Biona then raised the rigid form, and ransacked the clothing, with a view to discover something which might tend to identify the dead. They found, however, nothing in the pockets but a knife and snuff-box, and, concealed in a waistband, a little treasury of mixed coins of Switzerland and Piedmont. It was afterwards ascertained at the Châlets of Arolla that towards the end of October of the preceding year, a party of twelve men had set off to cross the Col, but being overtaken by a tremendous storm they determined to return-a resolution adopted too late for three, who, worn out with fatigue, and benumbed with cold, were at last abandoned in the snow. Two of the bodies had been previously recovered, and now measures were immediately taken to have the third brought down for interment. A little farther on traces were found of another victim-shreds of clothes and remnants of a knapsack-but the fleshy tabernacle had disappeared.

“Still lower, the remains of the bones and skin of two chamois, and near them the complete bones of a man. The latter were arranged in a very singular manner, nearly the whole skeleton being then in detached bones, laid in order along the ice—the skull lowest, next the arms and ribs, and finally the bones of the pelvis, legs, and feet, disposed along the glacier, so that the distance between the head and feet might be five yards-a disposition certainly arising from some natural cause not very easy to assign.'—p. 281.

Our friends now descended to the western branch of the head of the Val d'Erin, by continuing their course down the great glacier of Arolla. This glacier is quite normal in its structure, exemplifying well the parallel and vertical bands, sweeping round in the conoidal forms proper to the terminal or unsupported portion.

'The stream which descends the valley rises from beneath an arch of ice at the foot of the glacier. The bottom of the valley is wide, gravelly, and waste. A number of desolate and stunted pine trees occupy the western bank, and seem chilled by the near approach of the ice; many are dead, and some fallen. They serve to give a scale to the majestic scenery behind. Their species is the pinus cembra, the hardiest of their class which grows to any size in Switzerland, and they are consequently to be met with at great elevations. This pine has various names. In the patois of Savoy, and many other places, it is called " Arolla,” whence the name of the valley and glacier. It yields an edible fruit, and the wood is soft, and well fitted for carving, for which it is preferred, especially in the Tyrol and Eastern Alps.'-p. 282.

Descending

Descending to Evolena, the pedestrians were received after a most cold and niggardly fashion in the dwelling of the curé, whose sister, 'a person of ungovernable temper and rude manners, seemed to find pleasure in the arrival of strangers only as fresh subjects whereon to vent her spleen, and to show how heartily she despised the inhabitants of her brother's parish, compared to the aristocratic burghers of the decayed town of Sion,'--her usual residence. We have no doubt that her inhospitality was exceeded only by her ugliness, but on this point the philosopher is silent. Jaded by a fatiguing journey, and without any prospect of beds for the night, she let them sit around a table, for a couple of hours, till some soup, prepared from their own rice, was at last placed before them. At a late hour in the evening they were told that one bed might be had somewhere in the village, so they left the manse, shaking the dust from their feet, and proceeded to their destined lodging, where, drawing lots for the place of repose, our Professor gained the prize. Where M. Studer slept never transpired ;-he had, however, spent a night of misery'and they parted shortly afterwards, under agreement to meet again at Zermatt.

We close our citations with a fragment from the Professor's descent in that direction upon the glacier of Zmutt.

sun.

knew very well that the formidable “Bergschrund” was open to receive the avalanche and its charge if it should take place. We had no ladder, but a pretty long rope. Pralong was tied to it. We all held fast on the rope, having planted ourselves as well as we could on the slope of snow, and let him down by degrees, to ascertain the nature and breadtu of the crevasse, of which the upper edge usually overhangs like the roof of a cave, dropping icicles. Were that covering to fail, he might be plunged, and drag us, into a chasm beneath. He, however, effected the passage with a coolness which I have never seen surpassed, and shouted the intelligence that the chasm had been choked by previous aralanches, and that we might pass without danger. He then (having loosed himself from the rope) proceeded to explore the footing on the glacier, leaving me and the other two guides to extricate ourselves. I descended first by the rope, then Biona, and lastly Tairraz, who, being unsupported, did not at all like the slide, the termination of which it was quite impossible to see from above. We then followed Pralong, and proceeded with great precaution to sound our way down the upper Glacier of Zmutt, which is here sufficiently steep to be deeply fissured, and which is covered with perpetual snow, now soft with the heat of the morning

It was a dangerous passage, and required many wide circuits ; but at length we reached, in a slanting direction, the second terrace or precipice of rock which separates the upper and lower Glacier of Zmutt. When we were fairly on the debris we stopped to repose, and to congratulate ourselves on the success of this difficult passage. Pralong then said that he wished to ask a favour of me. To my astonishment, this was that he might be allowed to return to Erin instead of descending the Glacier to Zermatt. He was afraid, he said, of change of weather, and did not wish to lose time by going round by Visp. Of course I readily granted his request, and paid him the full sum agreed upon. To return all alone (and it was now afternoon) over the track we had just accomplished was a piece of spirit which would scarcely have entered the imagination of any of the corps of guides of Chamouni. I almost hesitated at allowing him to expose himself, but he was resolved and confident; and having given him most of the provisions, and all the wine, we saw him depart.'-pp. 304-306.

We have not touched on many instructive and entertaining chapters; but enough, we hope, has been done to give our readers some notion of glacier-exploring, and also of the skill with which this energetic successor of Playfair manages to combine scientific disquisition and picturesque description.

Art. IV.-The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon,

including his Correspondence, and Selections from the Anecdote
Book, written by himself. By Horace Twiss, Esq., one of Her
Majesty's Counsel. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1841.
IN
N the Law Magazine of 1839 appeared a series of papers on

the life of Lord Eldon, compiled with such care, and including comments on the whole so just, that perhaps a revised collection of them was all the public may have expected; but the present Earl found, on examination, that materials equally authentic and interesting remained untouched; and he has been fortunate in obtaining the services of Mr. Twiss for the arrangement of a copious and regular biography. This gentleman had always, on a few important subjects, maintained opinions different from those of the venerated Chancellor; but his noble friend rightly anticipated that no such circumstance would be allowed to interfere with the fulness and fairness of his historical record. Mr. Twiss appears to us to have acquitted himself, as to all points of controversy, with an exemplary union of honesty and modestyneither dissembling his personal views, nor unnecessarily, upon any temptation, projecting them. His main narrative is freely and unaffectedly written-manly and spirited-on proper occasions interspersed with passages of true eloquence; the reader feels that he is in the hands of a man of extensive knowledge in life and affairs—acute, sagacious, thoroughly despising cant and claptraps. We cannot speak with the same unmixed approbation of the selections from the Chancellor's correspondence. Of course he asked and received the permission of those whose letters to his lordship are here printed-or of their proper representatives: but we must think that in sundry cases these parties ought not to have been, thus early, called upon to either grant or withhold such consent. Nor can we compliment Mr. Twiss unreservedly on the use he has made of a certain · Anecdote Book,' the amusement of octogenarian chair-days at Encombe,-or of some papers of reminiscences by surviving connexions. From these sources he has drawn undoubtedly many valuable illustrations of character and manners; but an ample supply also of bald Joe Millers, and dismal puns, and pointless details of dull doings. We hope to see all such heavy redundancies cleared away from a second edition. This is a sterling book : it will live, and no pains ought to be grudged.

It would be impossible, within the limits of one article, to comprise any adequate examination of even a few of the great questions, legal and political, with which Lord Eldon's name must be connected by every future historian of Great Britain. We shall