condensed, but not less manifested; and of which, though knowing ourselves a part, we lose our individuality, and mingle in the beauty of the whole.” Their next point was the charming little town of Venai, "more beautiful in its simplicity," says Shelley," than any I have ever seen; and it is rendered illustrious by having been the spot where Rousseau conceived the idea of his romance." Thence they proceeded on to Ouchy, for Lausanne, which has so many names in literature to render it a place of interest. They visited the house of Gibbon, and were shewn the summer-house where he finished his history, and Lord Byron gathered some acacia leaves from the old acacias on the terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, after having written the last sentence, to preserve in remembrance of him. "But," says Shelley, "I refrained from doing so, fearing to outrage the greater and more sacred name of Rousseau, the contemplation of whose imperishable creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal things." After being detained by rain for two days at Ouchy, during which period Byron found time to write the "Prisoners of Chillon," they again set sail for Mont Alegre, where they at length arrived, after an absence of nine days, both having stored their minds with images for a lifetime. CHAPTER IV. The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"-Shelley proposes returning to England-His schemes of travel-His visit to Chamouni-Description of Mont Blanc-The Mer de Glace-The Glacier de Boisson-The sources of the Aveiron. BESIDES the poems already alluded to by Lord Byron, Shelley's beautiful little poem entitled a "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," was the result of this romantic voyage. More than ever, amidst those scenes which intellect has adorned with many of its brightest and holiest attributes, he had become impressed with the conviction that: "The awful shadow of some unseen Power, Floats, though unseen, among us." And, constituted as his mind eminently was for such contemplations, it could not but receive here a new impulse, robed, as everything seemed to be, in the divine beauty of intellect and love. Indeed, it would be difficult to traverse such scenes and not to feel its reality. It had impressed itself strongly on the less earnest mind of his companion, who, as we have seen, had come to drink deeply from the fountains of Spiritualism, and the thoughts which the beauty and the grandeur of nature had inspired found expression in harmonious verse. Shelley's dreamy abstractions, frail and intangible as they sometimes appear to be, are here expressed in language not less ethereal, and the imaginative beauty of his philosophy floats over his verse like "hues and harmonies of evening." The allusions to his boyhood, wherein he depicts the awakening of his own geuins, gives to this poem its most touching interest; nor can anything be more beautiful than the concluding stanza : "The day becomes more solemn and serene Which thro the summer is not heard nor seen, Thus let thy power, which, like the truth Its calm, to one who worships thee, Notwithstanding the varied attractions which the natural beauties of Switzerland possessed, Shelley appears to have become affected with the maladie du pays, as will be seen by the following letter, written home to a friend in England, about a fortnight after his return from Vevai and Lausanne, and hitherto unpublished. "My opinion of turning to one spot of earth and calling it our home, and of the excellencies and usefulness of the sentiments arising out of this attachment, has at length produced in me the resolution of acquiring this possession. "You are the only man who has sufficient regard for me to take an interest in the fulfilment of this design, and whose tastes conform sufficiently to mine to engage me to confide the execution of it to your discretion. "I do not trouble you with apologies for |