]08 EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE. [April, 



bed of the delicate emerald fronds of the Oak-fern, contrasting 

 in their tender transparent greenness with the grey, lichened, 

 mossy, rugged stones and rocks among which their straggling 

 roots are so firmly anchored. Then, as he clings for support to 

 some tuft of herbage above, he suddenly finds in his hand a 

 bunch of leaves which he has not seen before, and which he 

 soon finds out belong to the Breidden plant Potentilla rupestris, 

 unknown elsewhere, but happily plentiful here, and growing 

 where it is not likely to suffer greatly from the ravages of un- 

 principled collectors. And then, as ledge after ledge of rock 

 comes into sight in his upward scramble, he rejoices in the ex- 

 quisite contrast of two friends, often found together, and though 

 each beautiful in itself yet each lending a new beauty to the 

 other, the tufts and masses of Geranium sanguineum, with its 

 large, graceful, drooping crimson flowers, and the stiff, upright 

 spikes of the dense cobalt-blue flowerets of the Feronica spicata. 

 Here and there too are seen standing out stiffly from the rock- 

 face three or four stems of the rare Lychnis Viscaria, crowned 

 with its bunches of bright pink flowers. While over numberless 

 little juts and ledges on every side hang the gay trailers of Rock- 

 rose and Sedum, with their yellow flowers, or sometimes the 

 larger and more beautiful flower-stems of the great ruddy-purple 

 Sedum Telephium, or the green leafy foliage of the St. John^s- 

 wort [Hypericum Androsceinum) . And there, to crown all, in 

 that damp, over-hanging cliff near the summit, see running 

 all along, that exceedingly lovely fringe — what delicately sculp- 

 tured string-course in richest work of art. had ever a tithe of its 

 grace ? — of the mingled fronds of the Cystopteris fragilis and the 

 Asp)lenium Trichomanes. All is beautiful, and all beautiful with 

 that pecular type of beauty belonging only to alpine regions, 

 where we have ever side by side, in a union most affecting to the 

 lover of beauty, both the glory and the grandeur of the vaster 

 works of the Creator, in the splendid outlines and magnificent 

 grouping of the mighty hills themselves, and also a delicate per- 

 fection of each minutest object that meets our gaze, so that not 

 a spray, not a leaflet, not a little starry flower, but seems in it- 

 self most lovely, and also just in that spot where its loveliness is 

 most perfect. I do not know whether others feel as I do, but I 

 can hardly imagine any one with a heart open to the glory of 

 creation, and a quick sense of beauty in the lesser works of God 



