dO RAMBLES IN WESTERN SWITZERLAND 



quickly, and leave all in darkness and obscurity. Such scenes ought 

 to be impressive lessons to the young and thoughtless : for so pass 

 away the glories of this world ; and the distant objects of ambition, 

 love, or happiness, shine to them with a colouring as briUiant, and 

 one which will prove as evanescent, even as the last tint communicated 

 by a summer's sun. 



Certainly a fine sunset in Switzerland is a thing not easily to be 

 forgotten when it has been enjoyed in silence and under favourable 

 circumstances. The lengthening shadows of the mountains, the 

 changeful tints of the calm waters, the distant snow on one side and 

 the gloomy forests on the other, are well calculated to produce a 

 train of thinking and ideas of rest and peace, reminding one of child- 

 hood and of home, and promoting a sadness and melancholy which 

 are quite in consonance with the best feelings of our nature. There 

 comes over one, on such occasions, a desire and longing after another 

 and a nobler state of existence, where the spirit will not be bound 

 down by the close cords of mortality, but will be free to range at 

 pleasure from world to world, and know clearly those hidden things 

 which the utmost stretch of imagination cannot now guess at. 



I shall not often be led into these digressions, but there are few 

 evenings of my life which recur so often with pleasure to my memory 

 as the one I am now describing ; and I have yet more to say concern- 

 ing it. Not long after the sun had quite set to us, but while it still 

 communicated a rosy hue to Mont Blanc, whose lofty and distant 

 summit did not become tinted till the snow of all the other and nearer 

 mountains had recovered its former whiteness, we strolled along the 

 ridge, and soon had occasion to descend a little on coming to a nar- 

 row ravine. In the course of two or three minutes we again had the 

 same prospect before us : the same, but how changed I Mont Blanc 

 had now become of the colour of chased silver, a rich creamy appear- 

 ance, which the distant snow will sometimes take on evenings like 

 this. The other mountains frowned in their dark outlines yet more 

 clearly than before ; for behind them had just arisen the queen of 

 night in all her simplicity and majesty, her full orb resting, as it 

 were, and skimming lightly upon the summit of one of them, as if 

 pausing to look upon the earth before commencing her nightly 

 course. It was her pale blue mingling with the last faint touches of 

 the rose, that had produced the rich but momentary colour we so 

 much admired. 



After a pleasant stroll through cultivated fields, catching at inter- 

 vals a momentary glance of the white summits of the distant moun- 



