Rhone, with its villages and castles, and its mixture of rich farms and vast beds and heaps of mountain fragments, deposited by furious tõrrents. What affects the mind very powerfully on first entering upon these scenes, is the deep dark blue, so intensely deep and overshadowing, of the gorge at its upper end, and at the magnificent proud sweep of the granite barrier, which there shuts it in, apparently without a passage. The mountains rise like vast supernatural intelligences taking a material shape, and drawing around themselves a drapery of awful grandeur ; there is a forehead of power and majesty, and the likeness of a kingly crown above it. 3. Amidst all the grandeur of this scenery, I remember to have been in no place more delighted with the profuse richness, delicacy, and beauty of the Alpine flowers. The grass of the meadow slopes, in the gorge of the Dala, had a depth and power of verdure, a clear, delicious greenness, that in its effect upon the mind was like that of the atmosphere in the brightest autumnal morning of the year; or rather, perhaps, like the colors of the sky at sunset. There is no such grass-color in the world as that of these mountain meadows. It is just the same at the verge of the ice oceans of Mount Blanc. It makes you think of one of the points chosen by the Sacred Poët to illustrate the divine benevolence (and I had almost said, no man can truly understand why it was chosen, who has not traveled in Switzer. land), "Who maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains.” 4. And then the flowers, so modèst, so lovely, yet of such deep ex'quisite hue, enameled in the grass, sparkling amidst it, "a starry multitude," underneath such awful brooding mountain forms and icy precipices-how beautiful! All that the poëts have ever said or sung of daisies, vīölets, snow-drops, king-cups, primroses, and all modest flowers, is here outdone by the mute poëtry of the denizens of these wild pastures. Such a meadow slope as this, watered with pure rills from the glaciers, would have set the mind of Edwards' at work in contemplation on the Jonathan Edwards, one of the first metaphysicians of his age, author of an "Essay on the Freedom f the Will." was born in East Tindsor, Connecticut, October 5th, 703. He entered Yale College in his thirteenth year; graduated with the highest honors; and continued his residence in the institution for two years, for the study of theol. ogy. He first preached to a congre gation in New York, in his nine beauty of holiness. He has connected these meek and lowly flowers with an image, which none (nun) of the poets of this world have ever thought of. 5. To him the divine beauty of holiness "made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers; all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the gentle, vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian appears like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground; opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun." 6. Věry likely such a passage as this, coming from the soul of the great theölögiän (for this is the poetry of the soul, and not of the artificial sentiment, nor of the mere worship of nature), will seem to many persons like viölets in the bosom of a glăc'iër. But no poet ever described the meek, modest flowers so beautifully, rejoicing in a calm rapture. Jonathan Edwards himself, with his grand views of sacred theology and history, his living piëty, and his great experience in the deep things of God, was like a mountain glacier, in one respect, as the "par'ent of perpetual streams," that are then the deepest, when all the fountains of the world are the driëst; like, also, in another respect, that in climbing his theology you get very near to heaven, and are in a very pure and bracing atmosphere; like, again, in this, that it requires much spiritual labor and discipline to surmount his heights, and some care not to fall into the crevass'es; and like, once more, in this, that when you get to the top, you have a vast,1 wide, glorious view of God's great plan, and see things in their chains and connections, which before you only saw separate and piecemeal. CHEEVER. GEORGE B. CHEEVER was born at Hallowell, Maine, on the 17th of April, 1807. He was graduated at Bowdoin College, September, 1825, studied theology at Andover, was licensed to preach in 1830, and was first settled as pastor over Howard Street church of Salem, Massachusetts. He went to Europe in 1836, teenth year. He preached in Northampton twenty-three years: was missionary to the Indians near Stockbridge, Mass., for six years; was in stalled president of Princeton College in January, 1758; and died on the 22d of March of the same year. 1 Vast, (våst.), see Note 3, p. 22. where he spent two years and six months. In 1839 he became pastor of the Allen Street church, New York, and in 1846 of the Church of the Puritans, a position which he still retains. In 1844 he again visited Europe for a year. Dr. Cheever is celebrated as a logician. He has a keen analytical mind, and combining fancy with logic, succeeds equally well in allegory and in argumentation Ilis numerous and valuable works have gained him an enviable position in AmerIcan literature. He has written extensively for our ablest reviews and periodicals. He was a valuable correspondent of the "New York Observer," when in Europe, and editor of the "New York Evangelist" during 1845 and 1846. He is now a contributor of "The Independent." His "Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress," published in 1843, and "Voices of Nature," 1852, are among the ablest of his productions, and indicate most truly his mode and range of thought. "WanderIngs of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Blanc and the Yungfrau Alp," from which the above extract is taken, published in 1846, on his return from his second risit to Europe, met with a very favorable reception. As a writer he is always clear and unimpassioned; he sees and hears and describes, never falling, through excess of feeling, into confusion, or figure, or redundancy of expression. The reader is strengthened by his power, calmed by his tranquillity, and incited to self-denying and lofty views, by his earnest and vigorous presentation of truth. VII. 150. ALPINE SCENERY. ABOVE me are the Alps-most glorious Alps The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The mirror, where the stars and mountains view Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue. With a fit mind, the might which I behold; But soon in me shall loneliness renew Le man or Geneva, a crescentshaped lake of Europe, between Switzerland and the Sardinian States. Length, forty-five miles; breadth, from one to nine and a half miles; and greatest depth, nine hundred and eighty-four feet. Its waters, which are never entirely frozen over, have a peculiar deep-blue color, are very transparent, and contain a great variety of fish. Steam navigation was introduced in 1823. Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, With the wide world I've dwelt in is a thing Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yět clear, His life an infancy, and sings his fill; If, in your bright leaves, we would read the fate Our destinies ō'erleap their mortal state, * Jura, (jo' ra), a chain of mountains which separates France from Switzerland, extending for one hundred and eighty miles in the form of a curve, from S. to N. E., with a mean breadth of thirty miles. One of the culminating points, and the highest, is Mount Molesson six thousand five hundred and eighty-eight feet above the level of the sea. And claim a kindred with you; for ye are That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. 7. All heaven and earth are still, though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling mōst; All is concentered in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense 8. The sky is changed! and such a change! O Night, And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! - not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue; And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! 9. And this is in the night. - Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, -a phosphoric seaAnd the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black-and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice ō'er a young earthquake's birth. 10. Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful :-the far roll Of your departing voices is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless, -if I rest. But where, of ye, O tempests! is the goal? |