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ever-varying scene. On such a fine day as I am supposing, 'dozens, or even hundreds, of ships and vessels of various sizes ' and descriptions, from all the mercantile nations of the earth, are seen jostling one another, dropping out, or dropping in, towing, warping, sailing, steaming on their different courses, ""a mighty maze but not without a plan." Even to inexperi'enced observation this apparent mass of confusion is very pleas'ing-though to such it must seem as inexplicable and beyond control, as that of the planetary movements, or the vagaries of 'the moon, which all admire, though few understand.'

The following is a true picture drawn from the life :

'If we watch a ship coming in, we shall see the anchor all ready to let go the cables ranged along the deck-the leads man in the chains taking cast after cast as briskly as he can, and singing out the soundings to the anxious pilot, as the harbour's mouth is neared. On entering it, the tacks become shorter, and are made with more smartness. The helm is put down quickly, the head sheets let fly in a moment, and about she comes! The yards spin round, ropes crack, and sails shake, as if the whole machinery of seamanship was going to pieces. As she heels to the gale, under the unrestrained leverage of the masts, the old ship creaks from stem to stern, by the friction of the timbers and beams against one another, and to shore-going senses it would seem that the danger was great. But if we now take notice of the weather-wise glance of the pilot's eye, or mark the tranquil deportment of the captain by his side, or observe the cheery laugh of the dripping crew, as the waves curl or break over them, we shall understand, although we cannot tell how, that in the midst of what seems tumult, and hazard, and difficulty, all is order and safety.'

The arrival of the sturdier class of ships from foreign parts, and the anxious ken of the merchant, whose soul is afloat on discovering the well-bleached white sail, at a distance, is graphically described; as is the well-sunned countenance of the experienced commander, in the iron grasp of his rope-worn fist,' when welcomed by the grateful owner.' The weather'beaten ship herself, dashing past like a meteor, enters the ' harbour before the wind, and is soon tightly lashed in security, after all her perils, by the side of her master's ware'house. Careless observers may contrast, to her disparagement, her battered appearance-her dirty grass-grown sides, spliced ropes, and threadbare and many-patched sails, worn thin and 'white by long use-with the smartly-painted hulls, the stiff and gummy canvass, the well-tarred shrouds and unstretched cordage, of the departing ships. But all these though scarcely noticed by the uninitiated-being characteristic marks of protracted 'hard work, are respected by all those to whom the scenes with

'which they are associated are familiar, and bring back a thousand 'hardships, as well as joys, to a sailor's mind.'

But when the tide has ebbed, and the beautiful overflowing basin is now an empty trough, with a slender, dirty stream struggling through a meadow of mud, the picturesque beauty is gone, and a different set of objects strike the eye. Now, Captain Hall describes the shipping as flung about at random, and instead of pointing their tall masts to the sky, like so many Gothic spires, are inclined over at every angle of the horizon; some prostrate on their beam-ends; others thrown out of the perpendicular, like, as he says, the trees of an American forest after a hurricane: There, all sailorless and disconsolate, the poor ships lie, as if they were nothing but wrecks, rotting and useless, in the 'dirty, sludgy, impassable slime. The pretty little boats, which an hour or two before skimmed merrily from side to side of the ' harbour, are now half-buried in the mud, with their noses down, their sterns up, their oars tumbled about, the rudders un· shipped.'

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Captain Hall then proceeds to describe the mode of clearing out the mud of dry harbours, by means of back-waters accumulated at the upper ends, and let out with a rush through floodgates; and instances Dieppe as one of the most remarkable he had met with but recurs to the crevasses in Louisiana, when the mighty Mississippi breaks through its frail embankment; and he makes a remark, that, while the lake at Dieppe was lowered about half a foot in a quarter of an hour, the gigantic Mississippi, though tapped by several enormous crevasses—each of which allowed a volume of water to escape larger than most European rivers-was not, in the smallest perceptible degree, lowered in its level!

We have very little patchwork in the first volume, the whole of it nearly being employed in a succession of striking and brilliant touches of Alpine scenery, under its ever-varying aspects, with the variety it is liable to, according to the state of the atmosphere and the seasons of the year. No one has a keener or more correct eye than Captain Hall for watching the changing hues that mountain scenery is constantly undergoing at different periods of the day, or is more alive to the glooms and gleams which alternate with clouds and sunshine; and no mountain poet, we believe, is more strongly impressed with a feeling of their grandeur and their beauties. The following we can vouch for being as true to nature as it is beautifully described :

:

The most remarkable change, however, which takes place in the colour of the snow on the higher ridges of the Alps after sunset, has not,

I think, been either poetized, or ever been described in prose,—and, as it was quite new to me, may possibly be so to others. While the eye is feasting on the rich tints which succeed to the bright light of day, and wishes they might last for ever, the rose colour gradually dies away, and its place is taken by a livid, dead white, resembling so fearfully that of a corpse, that I felt quite shocked as well as startled by the change,-nor have I ever met with any one whose nerves were not more or less disturbed by this painful transition from the blush of health, as it were, to the paleness of death! I have seen very wild deserts in Peru and elsewhere, and many other scenes of desolation in the world, but none which has struck me with so deep a feeling of melancholy, as the sight of Mont Blanc during the period, fortunately a brief one, in which this livid hue is spread over it. Before the shades of night finally settle over all, a very slight and scarcely perceptible return of the rose-tint is often visible on the snow-a sort of reanimation of the scene, which is most cheering and consolatory.'

Captain Hall is generally successful in sketching the prominent parts of a picture, so as to convey a striking likeness by a few strokes; though we think he sometimes goes rather too minutely into detail when he decides on giving a finish to his picture. We should say this with regard to his elaborate description of the formation, the position, and progressive descent of the Alpine glacier, which in fact is little more than-but on a magnificent scale-the formation of a sheet of icicles pendent from the eves of a tiled or slated roof, if we may be permitted-parvis componere magna-to make the comparison. We prefer, therefore, rambling a little further in the chapter which he calls The Jardin, and from which the above extract was taken; for though many have seen, and more read, of the Mer de Glace, which is in fact a gigantic glacier, yet few—(we know of none)have traversed its surface to the extent with Captain Hall. In this journey over the Sea of Ice, he was accompanied by two Frenchmen and a German so far as to this Jardin-' a remote ' and seldom visited spot, lying far up in the very bosom of the 'eternal snow regions of the mountain.'

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They found the surface of the ice quite rough, but full of enormous rents, over which it is necessary to leap with poles; heard stories of travellers falling into the abyss more than a hundred fathoms, and of course never seen more. One of these unfortunates, the guides told them, had been fished up by means of a long line with a hook at the end of it-of course, quite dead. At one spot, near the foot of the mountain precipice, was a mass of granite projecting out of the ice, about as big as a 'mail-coach.' One of the guides said, 'Be silent and steady, or you are lost!'-and suddenly seized the travellers, one by one, and whisked them beyond the point of danger. We now,'

says Captain Hall, begged permission to set up a shout, in order to bring the stone down;' the guides, however, were more prudent, not knowing to what extent things might go- No! no! let the rock alone; and very thankful may we be if we shall find 'it sticking where it now is when we return here some hours 'hence.' In the summer season the heat melts and sets in motion whole acres of snow, as thickly marked with granite boulders, as a plum-pudding is with currants and raisins.'

'I took some pains to form an estimate of the size of one of these ridges of broken stones, called Moraines by the guides, which I found about a league, or three miles, in length, 100 feet high in the middle, and about 500 feet wide at the base. The stones composing this huge wall or mound of debris, varied in size from a billiard-ball to that of a small house; and some gigantic fragments were pointed out to us by the guides, which they declared they had watched for many years slowly descending into the valley of Chamouny. One of these was an immense mass, forty or fifty feet in its least dimension, which had arrived so very near the edge of the cliff over which the mer-de-glace pours itself like a frozen Niagara, that we half expected to see it fall over. The guides laughed at our impatience, and said it might be two or three years yet before the glacier would have advanced far enough to precipitate the rock over the edge.'

At length they reached the Jardin, after a march of five hours. without stopping, and found it merely a flat space of bare rock, about a quarter of an acre in size, with here and there a few halfstarved grey lichens clinging to it.'-But the scenery?—that we must leave to the Captain.

To describe such a scene is so manifestly impossible, that the attempt -unaided by any thing short of a panorama from the hand of Burford-would be impertinent. But I may mention that its peculiarity consists in the entire absence of every single thing-except the sky overhead— to which our eyes have been accustomed to look at elsewhere. There is not only not a single tree in sight, but not the smallest appearance of a shrub, nor a single blade of grass, far or near, nor even the least speck of green. Of course there are no traces of man's habitation, nor that of fowls of the air, nor of beasts of the field; not even a fly buzzes about. In short, no living things appear in this wide world of snow. There is plenty of that, however, as one of my companions remarked with a shrug which implied any thing but admiration of the desolate landscape. But notwithstanding the Frenchman's shrug, the scene possesses very great beauties in its way; for though every thing is white, the shades and even tints which it presents, like those of Wouvermans' celebrated white horse, are of boundless variety. In some directions the snow sends back so dazzling a glare, that, without reducing the pupil of the eye to a point like that of a cat looking at the sun, we can scarcely bear to face it. In other directions, not only the clefts or ravines in the ice, but even broad valleys, are cast into a depth as well

as breadth of shade which would enchant Martin the painter, and might have given him a hint for a polar palace, should it occur to his magnificent fancy to represent the court of the "ice king" of the German poets.'

Captain Hall gives us no new fact respecting the far-famed sagacity of the dogs of the Hospice of St Bernard: he bears testimony to the generous assiduity of the Prior to minister to the wants of every one who claims the hospitality of the convent; and avows that he cannot recall to mind having any where met with so much genuine attention.

We took a sunrise walk with the Prior, accompanied by three of his principal dogs; and listened, with an interest I cannot describe, to his account of the manner in which he and his brethren, assisted by these faithful attendants, hunted among the snow for fainting passengers during the long and dreary winter. He pointed out to us many scenes of suffering and of death; some where the dogs had succeeded in carrying provisions to persons too much exhausted to walk further, but who were instantly sought for by the monks on the dogs returning with their empty baskets, and appealing for further assistance. It would appear that these noble animals enter fully into the spirit of this singular species of hunting-in which the object is to save-not to destroy; and that their natural sagacity is so sharpened by long practice and careful training, that a sort of language is established between them and their masters, by which mutual communications are made, such as few persons living in situations of less constant and severe trial can have any just conception of.'

The Captain next describes his crossing the Gemmi Pass to the baths of Leuk; and his account of what there takes place will so strongly remind the more ancient portion of our readers, of what some of them at least must have seen and probably joined in what every day took place at Bath-that we cannot, as we think, gratify them more than by giving them an exact parallel.

'On reaching at last in safety the baths of Leuk, lying near the foot of this extraordinary mountain pass, I managed, by help of a stick on one side and a friend's arm on the other, to crawl into one of the large bathrooms, where rather a comical sight met our eyes. The heads and shoulders of between twenty and thirty persons might be seen above the surface of a great reservoir or bath, of a square form, all the party being immersed, nearly up to the throats, in water so hot that the steam rose from it in clouds, while they seemed to be patiently undergoing the process of parboiling! The ladies and gentlemen, mixed indiscriminately together, were surrounded by children, romping and splashing through the water near their parents. Each patient, of course, wore a long robe or bathing gown, and most of them some kind of head-dress. Before them floated small tables, on which the ladies placed their work, the gentlemen their books and newspapers, the children their toys. Some of the company sipped their chocolate; others passed their time in clipping different coloured papers, and pasting them into artificial flowers;