"The morn her sunlit steps, in the Eastern clime,
Advancing sows the hills with orient pearls."

Then, each rising eminence may become to his devotion, an altar, chantry, or votive shrine. Moreover, to his eye of faith, at eventide, each cavern or recess, with its chrystalised chandeliers may appear an oratory illumined for nocturnal prayer!

"O what a glory doth the world put on

For him, who with a grateful heart goes forth;
Under the bright and radiant sky, and looks

On duties well performed, and days well spent ;

For him, the winds, and verdant trembling leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquence in prayer."

No written diurnal does he need, or printed breviary; for, the landscape by day, and the starry heavens by night, suggest antiphons and collects appropriate to each season: Not a tone,—

"Which the lips utter mournful or severe;

alone:

But man can make the thrilling sound his own;
Devotion's choral chant-grief's dirge-like moan—
Triumph's loud swell-affection's gentle sigh,
And the low murmurs breathing peace
Oh! happy he who listens not in vain ;
He to whose chastened fancy woodland glade,
And far spread forest with its depth of shade,
Become a temple; to whom flower and tree,
The monitors of holy truths are made,
Reminding him, though passing frail he be,
His glorious noble dower is immortality."

Remote from men's highways, in the midst of an Alpine solitude, how impressively awful to a lone pilgrim appears the Creator's giant works!

"And now the wood engirds him, the tall stem
Of fir and beach-tree hemming him around,
Like pillars of some natural temple vast,

And here and there some vagrant pines ascend-
Briareus-like, amid the starless air,

High stretching like a good man's virtuous thoughts,
Forsaking earth for heaven,"

Thus devoutly may he think of his celestial home, and contemplate the divine Artificer's works in nature's loftiest wilderness, where icebergs and granite rocks are tossed about, like the fragments of a broken world:

"And where the toppling crags of snow,

And avelanches, which a breath draws down

On mountains high overwhelming.

The mists boil up amid the glaciers-clouds

Rise circling from the abyss-white and sulphurous,
Like foam from a rous'd Ocean."

Then, conscious how powerless he is without aid from the Most High, the humble-minded pilgrim yields to. the necessity of prayer:

"He hears it in the stormy winds,

And feels it in the lightning's gleam;

A tongue in every leaf, he finds,

A voice in every stream;

It speaks in the enamell'd flower,

With grateful incense borne on high,
It echoes in the dripping shower,

And breathes in midnight's breathless sky;
Through all her scenes of sad and fair,
Nature suggests a fervent prayer;
God of the world! the hour must come,
And nature's self to dust return:

Her crumbling altars must decay,

Her incense fire shall cease to burn;
Still hearts grow holier as they trace
The beauty of this world below."

CHAPTER IV.

NATURE'S CATHEDRAL-THE UNIVERSE, GOD'S TEMPLE—THE EVER OPEN BASILICA-A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF ITS ARCHITECTURE, ETC.

"LET the Lord God be a witness to you. The Lord from His holy temple." (Micheas). "Adore ye the Lord in His holy court." (Ps. xcv.) "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him." (Heb. iii.)

“The universe is God's temple," writes St. Ambrose, "and man its priest." The Most High Himself gives this testimony, "Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool, what house will you build for me," saith the Lord? "Hath not my hand made all these things?" (Acts vii.) Hence, it is not exclusively in cathedral, church, or chapel, that homage should be paid to the King, by whom all things live. Like Enoch::

"I love, on mountain top, to watch the sun
Spring from his ocean bed, with joyous leap,
And start exultant on his grand career."

Mindful of Jehovah's omnipresence, a pilgrim may worship the Lord's triune majesty on a mountain throne, in Nature's colossal, and ever open Basilica. "How great is the house of God, and how vast is the place of His possession! It is great and has no end,—it is high, and immense." (Baruch. iii.) "Behold, He that formed

D

the mountains, and created the winds, and declareth His mind to man; He, that maketh the morning mist, and walketh upon the high places of the earth. The Lord of Hosts is His name!" (Amos. iv.)

Unenviable are the feelings of the stoic, who can, with indifference, behold, for example:

"The soaring Jungfraw rear,

Her never trodden snow, and see the hoar

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc, both far and near

If he observes the Pyrenees and Alps;

Those Altar stones of Nature, whose vast walls
Have concealed, in clouds, their snowy scalps,
And throned eternity in icy halls

Of cold sublimity ;-where forms and falls
The avelanche-the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather'd round those, as to shew how

Rocks may rise to Heaven; yet, leave proud man below."

There is a sanctity, as was before remarked, as well as a sweetness in the mountain air. Moreover, in elevated regions, amid the massy boulders and cavities of rocks, how impressive is the oft repeated echo? To the hushed pilgrim's hearing sense, the slightest reverberation may seem not unlike an Archangel's voice calling, not to the Dome:

"Where crumbling arch and column,

Attest the feebleness of mortal hand;

But, to that Fane most catholic and solemn,

Which God hath planted.

"To that cathedral boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps, the sun and moon supply,
Its choir, the winds and waves-its organ, thunder,
Its vault, the sky.

"There amid solitude and shade, man wanders
Through the green aisles, or stretch'd upon the sod,
Awed by the silence, reverently ponders

The ways of God."

or tor

However, it is not only when whirlwinds roar, rents bound, or when "abyss calls upon abyss, in the voice of many waters," that the Lord's mystérious behests are heard; but, they may also come to an attentive ear, through the zephyr's soft whispering, or the streamlet's low murmur,

"Combined with the gentle minstrelsy of the grove,

The song of birds, the distant waterfall,

The leafy whisper of the wood, the hum

Of insect life-rude sounds! but yet they come
In likeness of vibrations musical.

And thus the poetry of common things

Sends up the dew of thought; the better part
Of truth neglected wakes, and waking, brings
A spiritual verdure on the heart."

Let us suppose, after a refreshing sleep, the pious palmer resumes his uphill pilgrimage at early dawn;

"Ere all the birds have matins said,

And sung their thankful hymn.'

On reaching an elevated plateau commanding a vast landscape, he may pause to admire the sunlit heavens, smiling as it were with a Creator's love for his creatures. Ere intoning his matin song, let him take a bird's-eye view of the subjacent panorama, which comprehends the disjuncta membra" of nature's cathedral, and which is partially hidden by uprising vapours and mists.

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