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ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken — that 

 cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous 

 stones, and unlightened, even in their religion, except by the 

 vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with 

 threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror — a smoke, 

 as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and, 

 amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in 

 hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply 

 than for others, with gouts of blood. 



Fig. 6i. — An alpine village. 



" Do not let this be thought a darkened picture of the life ot 

 these mountaineers. It is literal fact. No contrast can be more 

 painful than that between the dwelling of any well-conducted 

 English cottager and that of the equally honest Savoyard. The 

 one, set in the midst of its dull flat fields and uninteresting 

 hedgerows, shows in itself the love of brightness and beauty ; 

 its daisy-studded garden-beds, its smoothly swept brick path to 

 the threshold, its freshly sanded floor and orderly shelves of 

 household furniture, all testify to energy of heart, and happiness 



