there is something striking in a wilderness of peaks, countless as 'the leaves in Vallombrosa,' there is throughout a want of cohesion and concentration. In this respect, the Confinale is a striking contrast, and is a good example of a rare class of views. It stands approximately at the centre of a gigantic horseshoe of snowclad mountains, from which it is divided by a deep trench, except at the point where a low isthmus connects it with one of the loftiest summits (the Königspitz), and divides the waters of the two streams at its base. Had I been consulted as a landscape gardener on the laying out of this district, I should certainly have recommended the complete omission of the Confinale, and substituted for it a level plain or perhaps a lake. Its site would then have formed, as it were, the pit of a mighty theatre some five and twenty miles in circumference; the huge mountain crescent occupying the place of the boxes and galleries. As, for obvious reasons, my advice was not asked, the visitor must be contented with the present arrangement, and imagine himself elevated on a lofty rostrum in the centre of the pit, but still far below the galleries. On his left hand a long wall of tremendous black cliffs (strongly resembling those of the Gasterenthal near the Gemmi) sinks into the wild valley of the Zebru, inhabited only in the summer months by a few herdsmen. Above this wall, at some distance, towers the massive block of the Ortler Spitz, tossing its lofty crest still higher into the air. About the centre of the crescent, in front of the spectator, the ridge culminates in the noble Königspitz, falling on this side in a sheer cliff towards the valley. The mighty precipices of this segment of the crescent, through which one or two huge glaciers have hewn deep trenches towards the valley, are well contrasted with the graceful undula

tions of the long snowslopes and streaming glaciers which clothe the ridges to the right. The ever beautiful Tresero marks an interruption to the wall, where a lateral valley comes in from the south, but it is continued in the long swell of the Sovretta. This half of the semicircle is divided from the Confinale by the green valley of the Frodalfo, into which the eye plunges for some thousand feet, though not quite far enough to catch sight of the baths which nestle at the bottom of the gorge. There are nobler mountains, steeper cliffs, and vaster glaciers elsewhere, but it would be hard to find any point from which the sternness and sweetness of the high Alps are more skilfully contrasted and combined. From the top of yonder parapets, not forty, but (say) forty thousand ages look down upon you; and the scarred and crumbling parapets seem well placed to guard the quiet pasturages upon which they look down. It may remind one of the inaccessible ridge that surrounded the mythical Abyssinian valley of Rasselas; and involuntarily I used to quote a fragment from Mr. Kingsley's ballad describing old Athanaric's sensations on looking at the walls of Constantinople:

sure

Bernina chain is conspicuous. I do not attempt to say what is or is not in sight, for three reasons: first, I don't care; secondly, I am the reader doesn't care; and thirdly, I don't know. But if the spectator is lucky enough not to have a clear day, he may enjoy some such view as that at which I wondered. Vast snow storms were sweeping across the sky, casting many square leagues at a time into profound shadow, with broad intervening stretches of sunshine. The solid mountains, under the varying effects of light and shade, seemed to melt, and form, and melt again; and it was impossible to recognise particular points without minute local knowledge. At every instant some new ridge seemed to start into existence, and then to be blotted out or sink into a plain. It is a strange sight to see mountains resemble the changing sea-waves; and yet, if geologists speak truth, it is only what we should see, if we could live a little slower, and consider a million years or so as a single day. Meanwhile, it is just

as well for us that these freaks are nothing but the effects of fancy, and that the Confinale is, for practical purposes, as firm as the Monument or, indeed, rather firmer. Yet I have still a faint wish that it could be levelled, and the interior of that mighty crescent be converted into a level park. There would really be nothing like it in Europe, and there would be some admirable locations for monster hotels and casinoes. Perhaps the Americans will set about it, when these effete countries are annexed to the United States.

Once more, and only once more, I must invite my reader to yet a further effort. I confess for it would be useless to conceal that I am a fanatic. I believe that man ought to climb mountains, and that it is wrong to leave any district without setting foot on its highest peak. I will not inflict upon any harm

less person the thousand and firs: account of a mountain ascent, nor talk learnedly of snow-slopes and step-cutting, and crevasses and ropes, nor even make the conver tional jokes about eating and drink. ing. But I cannot, in common decency, leave Santa Catarina before paying my respects to the monarch of the district, the noble König. spitz. Long had that peak haunted my dreams, and beckoned to me whenever I had climbed above the lower slopes of the valley. I hal treated the complaint homœopathi cally, by an ascent of the Tresero; but my appetite was whetted instead of satiated. I had distracted my attention by various long, solitary rambles up some of the minor peaks. There is this great advantage about walking without guides-namely, that it is easy to get into real diffi culties on places where it would be apparently impossible to do so on the ordinary system. Thus, for example, on the Sovretta, there is only one cliff on the mountain where anything like a scramble is con ceivable, and that cliff is perfectly easy to cross except after a fresh fall of snow. It is entirely out of the way of any sensible route to anywhere. But by abstaining from guides I succeeded in placing my self on the face of this cliff the morning after a heavy snow-fall, and had two hours of keen excite ment in a climb which was ulti mately successful. By pursuing this system courageously, a traveller may discover difficulties and dangers on the Rigi or the Brevent; and if he be careless and inexperienced, may even manage a serious accident in either of those places. I felt, how ever that though a pleasant subst tute, this was not quite the real thing. I was too much like the sportsman reduced by adverse cir cumstances from tiger-hunting to rabbit-shooting; and when the Kōnigspitz renewed its invitation, one lovely afternoon, I could not find it

in my heart to refuse, and made an appointment for the next morning at 2 a.m. And here, in accordance with the pledge just given, I omit a thrilling description. The reader may fancy precipices covered with treacherous rock, giddy slopes of ice, yawning crevasses, or any combination of terrors taken at random from Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers, or the year-books of Alpine Clubs. It is enough to say, that with the help of a good guide (one Pietro Compagnoni, whom I hereby commend to Alpine climbers), I found myself, about half-past nine, enjoying a strangely impressive view. It is easy enough to describe what I saw; but the mischief is that I was chiefly impressed by what I did not see; and herein lies one great difficulty of the descriptive traveller. He can draw some rough outline of the picture photographed on his mind's eye, but how is he to reproduce the terrors of the unseen, which were probably the most potent elements in the total effect produced? Here, for example, I was standing on the highest point of the Königspitz; a few yards of tolerably level snowridge were distinctly visible; I could easily picture to myself the steep icy staircase by which I had climbed to it from the top of a lower precipice; but, looking upwards, or in any direction horizontally, nothing met the eye but a blank wall of mist. On either side I could see slopes of snow or rock descending with apparently frightful steepness for a few feet, and then, once more, that blank misty wall. I know not what gulfs might have been revealed if the mists had suddenly lifted, or what grand form of cliff or mountain spire might have shaped itself out of the background. In short, I saw little more than might be observed in a thick mist on a snowy day on the top of Snowdon or Helvellyn; and yet I count that the mountain tops which I have visited under such circumstances have not VOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCLXXIX.

been the least impressive of my acquaintance. It is a secret of good art to leave something to the imagination; and I had quite enough materials to work with. I knew how steep and slippery was the path which had led to this mid-aërial perch; the precipices which I saw on every side plunging furiously downwards must be far steeper than those by which I had ascended. Suppose I had suddenly cut the rope, and pushed Compagnoni over the edge, I could realise only too vividly the plunge which he would take into the lower regions, the terrible acceleration of his pace, and the fearful blows, at increasing intervals, against the icy ribs of the mountains. It is an amusing and instructive experiment, if you have a weak-nerved companion, to throw down a large stone under such circumstances; and if by any ingenious manœuvre you can give him the impression that it is one of the party, the effect is considerably heightened. The hollow sound of the blows coming up, fainter and fainter, from the invisible chasm beneath naturally enables one to realise the course which one's own body would follow, and renders the cliff, as it were, audible instead of visible. By such dallying with danger, one learns to appreciate the real majesty of an Alpine cliff. There are various delusions of perspective which on a bright day sometimes diminish the apparent height of a precipice; but when it is robed in mysterious darkness, and only some such dim intimations as the sound of a falling stone come up to stimulate your curiosity, it is your own fault if

you do not make it the most terrible of

cliff's that ever tried the steadiness of a mountaineer's head. I confess, indeed, that the Königspitz was too thickly shrouded on the day of which I speak; it would have been still more majestic had its robes been parted at intervals, so as to give artistic revelations of its mas

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sive proportions. Yet it is worth remarking that nothing helps more to give a certain mysterious charm to the mountains than an occasional ramble through their recesses in bad weather it is only a halfhearted lover of their scenery who would pray for a constant succession of unclouded skies. Could such a prayer be granted, the mountain which was its victim would be as tiresome as a thoroughly goodtempered man-that is, it would be on the high road to become a bore. We left Santa Catarina by the Stelvio, and halted for a day or two at the charming little village of Trafoi. Trafoi is undoubtedly more lovely than Santa Catarina, indeed it may rank with the most perfect of Alpine centres. Accordingly, certain sceptical doubts beset me for a time as to the charms of the district I have endeavoured to describe. Had we really been comfortable or well-fed? Was our admiration genuine, or more or less due to affectation? The first discoverers of a new district are always unduly eulogistic, because praising it is indirectly praising themselves. Might we not have been giving way in some degree to that common weakness? These unpleasant doubts have gradually given way to a settled faith. I am far from declaring that a belief in the inimitable glories of Santa Catarina is an essential part of the true mountaineer's creed.

Still more I should shrink from condemning to everlasting exclusion from that little paradise any one who might take a lower view of its merits than I do. He would be wrong, but I doubt whether his error would be of so deep a dye as to be necessarily criminal. I would speak to him if I met him in the streets, especially in London. Indeed, heresy in Alpine matters is not so unpardonable as appears at firstsight. No one can appreciate good scenery when his digestion is out of order; few people can appreciate it with blisters on their feet, and not every one who is bitten of fleas. Therefore, if a person who has visited any Alpine district under such disadvantages ventures to differ from me, I am frequently inclined to forgive him. One of the evils I have mentioned is, I fear, for the present, almost inseparable from Santa Catarina, and so far heretics may put forward a plea of some value; but if any one provided with a good bottle of insecticide, and otherwise in health and spirits, should deny the charms of Santa Catarina, I consider him as beyond the pale of the true faith, and liable to the consequences of such a position, whatever they may be. The only piece of advice I shall give him is, to stay away, that there may be the more room for orthodox believers.

FE

Of

NEW men under thirty would dare to believe in a ghost story, even were it attested by every judge on the Bench. Aiblins, my grandmither was an awfu' leear,' was the undutiful suggestion of the gentleman who had been telling a story of certain strange occurrences, wholly inconsistent with the laws of the universe, which had befallen a revered relative of his own. Most of us, however, have once or twice in our lives heard such stories advanced upon authority it ill became us to impeach; but though silenced, we have been unconvinced. Now this incredulity is a little remarkable, forming, as it does, a striking contrast to the ready faith with which new discoveries in other branches of science are observed and accepted. course, everybody knows this was not always the case: there was a time when those who told of new things in chemistry, natural history, or social science, were obliged to stand with moral halters round their necks; and if the new invention failed to win immediate approval, the over-bold discoverer was strangled, at least in metaphor, and compelled, for the rest of his natural life, to mutter 'pur si muove' to a limited circle of freethinking suspects; whereas if he announced a communication from the spiritworld, he told his hearers what they were all very ready to believe; and to sift over-narrowly the proofs of his tale argued a degree of scepticism closely bordering upon impiety. Now human belief has not thus veered round to the opposite point of the compass merely in consequence of the growth of a habit of mind which demands severely logical proof in support of every startling occurrence, although no doubt the belief in goblins has been much shaken by the deplorable

break-down of the evidence by which many have been attempted to be established; a deeper change has taken place than the mere rise of a belief that ghosts are not proven. The teller of a ghost story now-a-days makes a far more startling demand upon our faith than did his predecessor in the days when spiritual manifestations, in one form or another, were so common as to be scarcely regarded as supernatural; and the tale has altogether a different signification, although the outward accidents of the story may be identical with goblin tales of the good old days; for the ghost himself is not the ghost of yore, but is a wholly different being, moved by other principles, and bound by other laws.

What we mean is this; when we of the present day talk of a ghost our idea is something of this sort; that the man himself, whose ghost we allege we were aware of, has been released from the earthly body through which he previously held communication with us, and by some means, of which we can give no explanation, has come back from his appointed place, and has manifested himself to us. Now, it is so violently improbable that man, who for weal or woe has passed away to other work, should, except in some tremendous exigency, be able or willing to leave his higher duties. for the purpose of completing his unfinished earthly task--that is to say, that the shadow upon the sundial of life should turn back, and the full-grown man once more become a child-that as soon as people came to hold the belief that a ghost was the man himself, they began to doubt the reality of apparitions, and to be very ready to listen to the sceptics who cavilled at the evidence on which these stories were based. But in the old times, when every