This first day of May, 1869, I am writing where my work was begun thirty-five years ago, within sight of the snows of the higher Alps.  In that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others.  The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline rest are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore.  These are no careless words—­they are accurately, horribly, true.  I know what the Swiss lakes were; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was clearer.  This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep.

The light, the air, the waters, all defiled!  How of the earth itself?  Take this one fact for type of honour done by the modern Swiss to the earth of his native land.  There used to be a little rock at the end of the avenue by the port of Neuchatel; there, the last marble of the foot of Jura, sloping to the blue water, and (at this time of year) covered with bright pink tufts of Saponaria.  I went, three days since, to gather a blossom at the place.  The goodly native rock and its flowers were covered with the dust and refuse of the town; but, in the middle of the avenue, was a newly-constructed artificial rockery, with a fountain twisted through a spinning spout, and an inscription on one of its loose-tumbled stones,—­

      “Aux Botanistes,
      Le club Jurassique,”

Ah, masters of modern science, give me back my Athena out of your vials, and seal, if it may be, once more, Asmodeus therein.  You have divided the elements, and united them; enslaved them upon the earth, and discerned them in the stars.  Teach us now, but this of them, which is all that man need know,—­that the Air is given to him for his life; and the Rain to his thirst, and for his baptism; and the Fire for warmth; and the Sun for sight; and the Earth for his Meat—­and his Rest.

Vevay, May 1, 1869.

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR.

I.

Athena CHALINITIS.*
(Athena in the Heavens.)

* “Athena the Restrainer.”  The name is given to her as having helped Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud.

LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN (PARTLY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, MARCH 9, 1869.