asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers; but, long before that time, we may all be cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice.  We need only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill with pleasant images the inexperienced fancy of your lovely niece.  The scenes which now surround us, vast and sublime as they are, are not such as can best contribute to this work.  Nature is here like our fortunes, grand, but too destructive, bare, and rude, to be able to afford delight to her young imagination.  Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy.  Winter will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double desolation; but we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and lead her to scenes of fertility and beauty, where her path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope.”

In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the following day.  We had no cause to hasten our steps; no event was transacted beyond our actual sphere to enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold the passage of the hours without dismay.  We loitered along the lovely Vale of Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the snowy mountains that wall it in.  We rambled through romantic Switzerland; till, fear of coming winter leading us forward, the first days of October found us in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis.  I cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this land of mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps as boundaries between our former and our future state of existence, and so clung fondly to what of old we had loved.  Perhaps, because we had now so few impulses urging to a choice between two modes of action, we were pleased to preserve the existence of one, and preferred the prospect of what we were to do, to the recollection of what had been done.  We felt that for this year danger was past; and we believed that, for some months, we were secured to each other.  There was a thrilling, agonizing delight in the thought—­it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the “snow fall in the river,” were we each and all—­but we strove to give life and individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed.  Thus tottering on the dizzy brink, we were happy.  Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside the waterfalls, near

 —­Forests, ancient as the hills,

And folding sunny spots of greenery, where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid up its hoard—­descanting on the charms of nature, drinking in the while her unalienable beauties—­we were, in an empty world, happy.