upward and cover valley and hill-side with their dark mantle, until silence covers the earth. Neither the monotony of the steppe nor the despair of the desert ever weighs on the buoyant heart: images of joy unutterable alternate with sweet, longing melancholy; impressions, ever changing, ever stirring, fill his soul from hour to hour, and feed it with sweet pain or happy peace, until it can live no longer without the unseen food, and sickens and sorrows when torn from its home. Dangers and difficulties of every kind steel his arm, and sharpen his senses; the purest air in all the earth, and ever new sources of joy and gratitude amid God's bountiful nature, enliven his fancy and quicken his heart's noblest feelings. The same wild, solemn and solitary scenery adds, morover, a blessing surpassing all others: a cheerful confidence, a quiet peace, a child's implicit reliance on Him, who has ever chosen to commune nearest with man, not in the lowly valley, but on the lofty moun

tain.

Hence it is that such heights, in proportion as they approach the character of true triumphant mountains, have ever been looked upon as the dwelling-places of greatest strength, of sweetest simplicity, nay, as the very homes of earliest poesy. Not without good reason have nearly all nations placed their highest and holiest conceptions upon lofty mountain tops, and ever claimed historical descent even, in the literal sense of the word, from the heights that tower around their earliest home. Hence, also, the well-known characteristic features of mountaineers, who show more markedly than all other classes of men the powerful influence of physical geography on the development of the race. They are found to abound in strength and in spirit. In body and mind the son of the mountains surpasses the children of the plain, because from earliest youth he has to rely on himself, must conquer difficulties after difficulties, breathes ever the purest air, and is, for more than one reason, less accessible to luxury and effeminacy. Strong and well-formed in body, active and vigilant in mind, the dweller on Alpine heights enjoys besides, in most instances, a more cheerful temper and more joyous manners than others-a blessing bestowed upon all of them alike, on the Alps of Switzerland and on Tartaric mountains, among Basques

and Abyssinians, on the Nilgerry and on the Himalaya.

It is true that local peculiarities occasionally produce striking contrasts, and shock our eye by the sight of piteous creatures in the very midst of a healthy, blooming population; but these are rare and isolated exceptions, confined to narrow limits and easily yielding to welldirected benevolence. The strengthening power of the mountains, on the other hand, seldom fails to reinvigorate the body, and to restore to the mind its buoyant elasticity, especially where, as in the tropics, they become the natural resort of suffering natives and debilitated strangers. Such great natural blessings, combined with the active spirit and the self-conscious strength of mountaineers, could not fail to produce both courage and independence. They all love freedom. We need no examples; for, from the sons of Scotland and icy Norway, in the north, to the free Swiss and the unsubdued Basques, in the south, they all bear witness to the fact.

Nor must we forget, that mountains isolate men more than anything else on firm land. Rivers have become highroads, and the ocean has been bridged over; but mountains, though covered with railway-tracks, and pierced by marvelous tunnels, will ever remain the great lines of division between kingdom and kingdom.

"Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one."

With equal jealousy, they shelter their own children against all influences from without. Among them ancient customs and strongly-marked individualities survive, long after repeated revolutions have cut down all that grows on the plain to a dead level. The mountaineer's house is his castle in a better sense and to a much fuller extent than even the proud Englishman's home. There he dwells in simplicity, but in content. His soil is poor, his resources are few, but his wants, also, are modest. Hence poverty and hospitality are the strange twin-sisters that are ever found under his rock-covered roof. So it is all over the globe, wherever men dwell in peace. The scantier life appears among them, the less comfort and luxury are known-the more they are given to value aid and to afford ready shelter to the weary wanderer or the sufferer among themselves.

Ritter, in his travels through Abyssinia, was long since led to the conclusion, that hospitality was at home in every Alpine region, in spite of their equally universal poverty.

What is, perhaps, least carefully noticed by the general observer in this kind of High Life is, the nomadic character of almost all dwellers on mountains. The sterility of the soil, in connection with the general activity of the race, drives them constantly away from their native land and leads them to emigrate, at least for a time, to distant countries, partly to sell there the products of their own industry and partly to seek there an ampler income and a provision for their declining years. Thus we find the brave Swiss serving foreign masters with a touching fidelity that makes ample amends for his mercenary service, whilst the humbler son of Savoy is content to clean chimneys and to play his hurdy-gurdy. The poor, frugal GalleThe poor, frugal Gallego is found all over Spain, as cold Dalarm sends out her sons in winter, and her daughters in summer, to earn a living in Stockholm. The Fulah and the Zemindar of Kamaum but repeat in Africa and Asia the example of the Galician Pole on the northern Carpathian mountains. But from east and west, from north and south, they all gather again around their early home, ere the silver cord be loosed and the golden bowl broken.

Even on their own mountains, these hardy children of men often lead a life that somewhat resembles the wandering life of the nomad. Thousands earn a scanty living by traveling, without rest and repose, over high, steep passes, and through dangerous valleys, followed by long lines of heavily-laden beasts of burden; others, who live by their cattle, change from the lofty senn-huts in summer to the well-sheltered valleys in winter, whilst in the Himalaya they have special villages built for each season.

In their migrations they depend, like the nomads of the steppes, on the cattle that feed and clothe them. High up to the line of perpetual snow they drive their herds of gigantic oxen. Where horned cattle and even sheep no longer find green pastures, there the goat still knows how to support itself by frugal diet. But when even the most modest of our domestic cattle would starve, bountiful nature still furnishes two beings, so rarely endowed, so mar

If

velously fitted for their exclusive abode, that they have ever been noted as striking evidences of the wisdom and bounty of the Creator. The one is the reindeer, the all-useful friend of man in high northern regions. The other is the Yak, or grunting ox, which nature has fitted to live in the snow-covered mountains of inner Asia, on the very highest table-land of our globe, which the children of the soil call, in their expressive language, the "dwelling of snow," or the "roof of the world." A small buffalo in appearance, his long, shaggy hair, with which he is covered all over, sweeps the ground, and ends at the tail in a large and magnificent tuft. Independent of wind and weather, he lives wherever the mean temperature does not rise above the freezing point. the snows become too deep above, he rolls himself down a sloping mountainside and feeds while slowly ascending; when he reaches the summit, he rolls down again and eats a second deep furrow into the snow. When summer approaches he ascends to the regions of eternal snow, and the inhabitants leave their sheltered valleys and follow their numerous herds. They live on their milk, they eat their flesh, and dress them skins. Their long hair makes ropes stronger than hemp, and the bushy tail is eagerly purchased for fans and fly brushes. What is strangest, perhaps, is their use for the saddle. Wherever a man can walk, there the ox may be ridden. His intelligence is marvelous, often surpassing the far-famed cunning of elephants. When travelers have lost their way, one of these animals is driven ahead, and avoids with almost miraculous instinct all hidden clefts and crevices. When the passes are filled with snow, and neither man nor horse can cross the mountains, a herd of grunting oxen is sent on and soon tramples the snow sufficiently down to open a passage.

Need we wonder that the mountaineer loves his home, even to homesickness? Have not cows, exported from Switzerland, become maddened when suddenly hearing the Ranz des vaches? The French government, it is well known, had to prohibit the playing of certain Swiss airs in the presence of the Swiss regiments, because it was never done without causing more than one of that noble band to die of a broken heart! Among no class of men is the love of

their native country so universal, among none so all-powerful as among the children of mountains. Even when richest and most powerful abroad, they have been known to sigh for the poverty of their own hills. We all prize most highly what we have earned at the greatest expense of labor and patience -who has to work harder, who to wait more humbly for the blessing that comes from above, than those who hunt the chamois on threatening paths, or who till the soil that they have carried for miles on their shoulders from the distant valley? We all look back upon our hours of tears and gentle sorrow as the sweetest of our life; the heavenly dew then fell upon the germs of our warmest affections, our noblest impulses, and now they bud and blossom. The mountaineer, also, in his narrow home, sees in every rock but a grave-stone that covers one he has loved, in every tree a memento of dangers endured or losses inflicted. So he clings to his own native land, rich in memories, fertile in associations; he nestles in the bosom of that nature which he has ever looked up to as his loving mother, and neither the riches of cities nor the beauty of plains can ever wean him from his early, tender love. Even physical influence strengthens this feeling; the children of lofty highlands bear the denser air of lower regions as ill and as impatiently as the sons of the plain the purer air of mountains.

Isolated as they are from the rest of the world, its dangers and its temptations, leading a lonely life, with simple joys and simple wants, they have everywhere preserved longest of all the virtues of moral purity and strict honesty. What traveler in Europe has not noticed at once the striking difference, in Alps or Apennines, between the men that live near the much frequented passes, or popular high-roads, and those that dwell in remoter villages? Far away in the heart of the mountains, in narrow valleys and secluded glens, the wanderer often meets with a simplicity and honesty that have long since passed away from the plains below, and that seems still to exhale the perfume of early, happier days. When the inhabitants of Kamaum, on the Himalaya, leave their higher villages to go down for a season to the sheltered valleys, not a soul is left behind, and a few simple latches of wood protect safely all they possess upon

earth. Yet a theft has not been heard of for ages. Even in the Swiss Alps, bee-hives may be seen scattered far and near, on sunny rocks, near fragrant meadows, which are left there for the summer in trusting and honored confidence. The foot-wanderer through the Austrian Alps may also recollect the touching reliance with which his guide drops his burdensome coat by the wayside, sure to find it again, upon his

return.

Even in point of art some features may be found peculiar to the children of mountains. Almost all over the globe, they are found to love music with genuine fondness; and what gives to their airs a surprising resemblance in all Alpine regions on earth is, the neverfailing introduction of the echo into their melodies. Nature herself seems to have taught them, moreover, a certain love for pleasant colors and contrasts. Even in regions where the landscape is nowise remarkable for brilliant lights and lively colors, as in the Scotch Highlands, the same peculiarity may be observed. In the plain, the eye soon loses sight of all detail, and wanders wearily over the vast expanse of uniform color. In the mountains, on the contrary, brilliant contrasts abound: here it is the fresh green of luxuriant grass by the side of the rich hues of Alpine flowers; there the stern, gray granite rock sets off to perfection the clear, silvery stream of foaming waters that plays merrily over its surface. Their dwellings, also, are everywhere alike, from the Alps to the Ural, from the Pyrenees to the Andes. The use

of the same material-massive logs of wood-must needs produce in itself a certain similarity of forms; but what is less easily explained is the equally universal peculiarity, that all mountain races build their houses with roofs but little sloping, although for months and months heavy masses of snow rest upon them. With touching simplicity they also love everywhere to paint, on the carvings and cornices of their houses, quaint legends which express their confidence in the great Father in heaven. "I, John Gotthelf, built this house; but God gave His blessing!" Their whole life is summed up in the words:

"In this house I live on earth,

Here I and mine have had our birth-
But my home is above

With the great God of Love!"

enacted, no war undertaken, no tax imposed, no change in the currency effected, and no foreigner allowed to take part in the government. This substantial liberty had been retained even under the rule of the powerful Dukes of Burgundy, who sought to reduce them to subjection. When the Emperor Maximilian, at a later day, backed by all the might of the Roman German empire, endeavored to inflict extraordinary taxes upon them, and to quarter his troops in the provinces, they instantly flew to arms, and made no scruple of seizing his person, and confining him till they had attained satisfactory assurances of future security. They were republicans in spirit, if not in name. They prized that sturdy burgher independence which had made them what they were, and, at a time of almost universal war and universal abjectness, had not only raised their cities into cities of opulence, but had made them, also, cities of refuge for the world. Under these circumstances, the transition from civil to religious freedom was not difficult. At the oncoming of the Reformation, the Netherlanders were nominally Catholics; but nowhere were the new doctrines more gratefully welcomed than among them, or more rapidly spread. Introduced through a thousand channels-by the Protestant traders of Germany, by the English and French fugitives from persecution, by their own children educated at Geneva, by the Swiss mercenaries of the Emperor, even-they speedily diffused themselves over the land, like the waters of the sea when one of their dykes had broken. A hard-working people, they had little respect for the luxurious indolence of the monks; and a plain, simple-hearted people, they were more attracted by the intellectual charms of doctrine than by the sensuous splendors of ritual.

The Spanish nation, on the other hand, by nature arrogant, and by training superstitious and bigoted, was the willing slave of a double despotism, of a mighty but oppressive monarchy, and of an imposing but subtle and selfish ecclesiasticism. Its recent conquest of Grenada had rekindled its enthusiasm to the fiery pitch of the crusades, its discovery of the New World had given a vent to the most romantic spirit of adventure, as well as to the most ferocious cupidity; while the magnifiVOL. VII.-38

His

cent extent of its dominion filled it with unbounded audacity and pride. Every incident in the events of the time conspired to raise in the mind of the Spaniard the dangerous consciousness of his greatness. Master of half of Europe, and of nearly all America, with possessions in Africa, in Asia, and among the rich Spice Islands of the Indian seas, the favorite of the Holy Pontiff, himself the vicegerent of Christ, and the spiritual guide of a hundred million souls, he seemed to hold the keys to all the treasures of earth, and to all the glorious rewards of Heaven. He was the lord of man, and the man of the Lord; he had fused the powerful kingdoms of the peninsula into a single more powerful kingdom; he had driven the Saracen from Europe in the midst of a sanguinary resistance; he had been victorious over France; he had ravaged Italy; he had dared to beard the pope, and he had despoiled a new continent of its wealth. statesmen were the ablest that had appeared since the most flourishing days of Greece, and his soldiers the bravest that had appeared since the most flourishing days of Rome. His soldiers, indeed, were brave with more than Roman bravery; for, to the animal courage and national ambition of the Roman, they added the romantic valor of chivalry and the impulsive zeal as well as the stoical endurance of religion. It was not surprising, then, that the Spaniard should pride himself on his superiority among the nations; yet, more than the triumph of his arms, and more than the seductions of his policy, he valued the steadfastness which had distinguished his faith, and rendered him its elected champion. At a time when the people everywhere were falling away from the ancient church, like leaves from a smitten tree - when Germany, Holland, England, France, Sweden, and Switzerland, were stirred to their depths by religious schism, and even Italy was retained in the fold of the faithful only by the profound craft of a milder and more liberal policy on the part of Rome-the Spaniard remained unaffected. The result of the agitation, so far as man could see, had been to induce him to draw tighter the bands of intolerance, and to heap fresh fuel upon the fires of the inquisition. "Times of refreshing," as Macaulay says, came to all neighboring countries;

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