After this explanation you will feel how difficult it will be to describe the causes of our delight.  The leading features of the landscape, however, were a road that ran along the shore beneath a forest, within ten feet of the water, winding, losing itself, and re-appearing with the sinuosities of the bank; water, limpid as air and blue as the void of the heavens, unruffled and even holy in its aspect, as if it reflected the pure space above; a mountain-side, on the opposite shore, that was high enough to require study to draw objects from its bosom, on the distant heights, and yet near enough below, to seem to be within an arrow’s flight; meadows shorn like lawns, scattered over its broad breast; woods of larches, to cast their gloom athwart the glades and to deepen the shadows; brown chalets that seemed to rise out of the sward, at the bidding of the eye; and here and there a cottage poised on a giddy height, with a chapel or two to throw a religious calm over all!  There was nothing ambitious in this view, which was rural in every feature, but it was the very bean ideal of rustic beauty, and without a single visible blemish to weaken its effect.  It was some such picture of natural objects as is formed of love by a confiding and ingenuous youth of fifteen.

We passed the night in the drum of Lungern, and found it raining hard when we rose the following morning.  The water soon ceased to fall in torrents, however, changing to a drizzle, at which time the valley, clouded in mists in constant motion, was even more beautiful than ever.  So perfect, were the accessories, so minute was everything rendered by the mighty scale, so even was the grass and so pure the verdure that bits of the mountain pasturages, or Alps, coming into view through the openings in the vapour, appeared like highly-finished Flemish paintings; and this the more so, because all the grouping of objects, the chalets, cottages, &c. were exactly those that the artist would seize upon to embellish his own work.  Indeed, we have daily, hourly, occasions to observe how largely the dealers in the picturesque have drawn upon the resources of this extraordinary country, whether the pallet, or poetry in some other form, has been the medium of conveying pleasure.

The garcon of the inn pointed to some mist that was rolling along a particular mountain, and said it was the infallible barometer of Lungern.  We might be certain of getting fair weather within an hour.  A real barometer corroborated the testimony of the mist, but the change was slower than had been predicted; and we began to tire of so glorious a picture, under an impatience to proceed, for one does not like to swallow pleasure even, perforce.

At ten we were able to quit the inn, one half of the party taking the bridle-path, attended by two horse-keepers, while the rest of us, choosing to use our own limbs, were led by the guide up the mountains by a shorter cut, on foot.  The view from the Brunig was not as fine as I had round it in 1828, perhaps because I was then taken completely by surprise, and perhaps because ignorance of the distant objects had then thrown the charm of mystery over its back-ground.  We now saw the scene in detail, too, while mounting; for, though it is better to ascend than descend, the finest effects are produced by obtaining the whole at once.