Miscellaneous Intelligence. | 447 
respect to which | am certainly unable to say at this moment of what 
consist. I remember q light falling down upon Italy, blue, soft, and 
yet so distinct and clear that all I saw against the sky had an edge—but 
it was an edge of velvet. I remember how my eye, accustomed to the 
altitudes of the Alps, at first refused to rest upon the blue plains of Italy, 
but adjusted itself to them as clouds in the air, till at length after some- 
thing like a struggle it took the right focus, and falling down to the level 
e sea, made me conscious of my own great elevation. 
It is impossible to describe the light which illuminated the Italian view. 
It was a substance—as it seemed—and a color; and yet it was soft and 
clear. It glowed without being hazy, and gave everything with great 
distinctness without letting the eye into the deformities of the country, or 
displaying the formless and less pleasing secrets of the landscape, as the 
midday sun of Switzerland does. The guides said that in perfect weather 
the spires of the cathedral at Milan are visible, and that the eye can 
reach nearly as far as Venice. There were clouds on our horizon, and some 
of the valleys were filled with their billowy masses. The wind tossed 
y companion reached the summit a few minutes after I did, but im- 
mediately fell asleep and could not be roused till a few minutes before we 
left the top. I really did not observe how he came up the in or 
the crest of the Héchste Spitze, but I well remember seeing him lying flat 
on the lower tine of the summit, whence the guides steadied and lifted him 
lungs as it does elsewhere, and from observing myself I could detect none 
of those signs of a great altitude which other persons have felt on the 
summits of such high mountains. On Faulhorn, and at other times whem 
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it from looking into the thin, clear and rayless space which so 
9 saree Maat 
ountains, I have an indistinct recollection of having felt cold, and am 
