14 SOME UXTKODDEX SOLITUDES. 



cities stirring with the " hum of men," her vineyards and her garden*, 

 her grassy pastures, her prolific meadows, her well-ordered highways, 

 and those " iron roads " which are the incessant channels of such 

 restless energy, movement, and vigorous life. 



Bare and desolate enough, and as yet unconquered by advancing 

 civilization, are the mountains of France : among its gigantic ranges 

 of the Jura, the Yosges, and the Cevennes,* the traveller may still 

 ascend precipitous rocks, may hearken to the deafening roar of foamy 

 torrents, may contemplate with astonished gaze the masses of stone 

 upheaved in some convulsion of the ancient world, may listen to the 

 hoarse cry of the eagle, as 



" Close to the sun iu lonely lands, 

 Kinged with the azure world he stands." 



In the Alps, profaned as they now-a-days are by noisy tourists ; in the 

 Pyrenees, whither Alpine clubs have not yet extended their encroach- 

 ments, he who ascSnds some 8000 or 9000 feet may still wander 

 among ice and snow which the sun's rays never loosen, and gather in 

 his mind's eye a picture of the colossal peaks of Asia and the Xev* 

 World, of the virgin summits of the Himalaya and the Cordilleras. 

 There you may follow with entranced vision the swooping wing of 

 the lammergeyer ; or trace the nimble feet of the shy chamois ; or, 

 like Manfred, muse and wonder, while 



The sunbow's rays still arch 

 The torrent with the many hues of heaven, 

 And roll the sheeted silver's waving column 

 O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular." 



Mayhap, if favoured by Fortune, you may even find yourself face to 

 face, in the abrupt bend of some obscure ravine, with a bear, which, 

 calm and unsuspicious, looks on as you pass by, as if he were ignorant 

 of men, and had never heard the ringing echoes of the hunter's rifle. 



* The Jura chain is an outlier of the great Alpine system, and situated on the border of 

 Switzerland ; the Vosges separate the valley of the Rhine from that of the Moselle (greatest 

 elevation, 4G9 feet) ; and the Cevennes that of the Loire from the basin of the Rhone 

 (greatest elevation, 5794 feet). 



