64:6 Facts and Considerations 



vol. ii. of his Travels in the Tare?itaise ; and a description of the 

 rocks, ii. 12. The granite is not always a "dark red," for the 

 glaciers are strewed with blocks and fragments of differently 

 coloured granites ; and, among others, with the peculiar white 

 granite from the summits of the Aiguilles and of the Mont 

 Blanc, which are, perhaps, the most common. This granite is 

 traceable by its character, and may be picked up at the edge 

 of the ice on Montanvert, as well as all along the route of its 

 transport, as far as the Jura. See Bakewell, vol. i. p. 375-6.* 

 J. R.*s sketches give a good idea of the pyramidal forms of 

 the aiguilles. There is a large lithographic plate of Mont Blanc, 

 taken from Servoz, by Villeneuve, which is worth the pur- 

 chasing, if it fall in the way of a collector. It gives the whole 

 range from Chamonix, with the intermediate mountains, and 

 the vale between it and Servoz. f Mr. Charles Fellows, a fel- 



* [This state of alpine strata has given rise to the two following com- 

 prehensive speculations. They scarcely consort enough with the present 

 subject to be very fitly attached herej but they cannot fail to excite 

 welcomely the imagination of the general reader. On this account we 

 hope that neither IVIr. Clarke nor J. R. will disapprove our attachment of 

 them. 



" Those naturalists who have seen the glaciers of Savoy, and who have 

 beheld the prodigious magnitude of some fragments conveyed by them 

 from the higher regions of Mont Blanc to the valleys below, to a distance 

 of many leagues, will be prepared to appreciate the effects which a series 

 of earthquakes might produce in this region, if the peaks, or * needles' as 

 they are called, of Mont Blanc were shaken as rudely as many parts 

 of the Andes have been in our times." — Lyell's Principles of Geology, 

 vol. iii. 



" The rapid change which is now going on in the greatest altitudes of 

 Switzerland, points out to us the mode in which nature is operating by 

 decomposition, and the attraction of gravitation. When standing on the 

 borders of the Mer de Glace, and while crossing its frozen bosom, this 

 operation was brought most forcibly to my mind. Every moment my ears 

 were saluted with the sound, more or less distant, of rocks precipitated 

 from some height into the abysses below, and which reverberated over 

 this frozen sea. The time may come when the pinnacles of Mont Blanc 

 and other mountains which surround the beautiful valley of Chamouni, 

 will have been precipitated to their bases, and the debris be so completely 

 carried off as to leave, perhaps, that beautiful and fertile spot itself, the 

 highest pinnacle of the country, a naked rock to be gazed at from a dis- 

 tance." — Lea's Contiibutiom to Geology (Philadelphia, 1833), Introd. 

 p. 16, 17.] 



-j- The allusion to the Valley of Chamonix recalls to my mind that splendid 

 and beautiful poem, upon which alone the lately deceased Mr. Coleridge 

 might have rested his fame as one of the greatest of our modern bards. 

 There is nothing, if we except Milton, in the whole range of English blank 

 verse, at all comparable with the Hymn whence the following extract is 

 made : — 



" Ye Ice falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow 

 Adown enormous ravines slope amain — 

 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice, 



