sheep, the poor sheep!' My eye instantly glanced at the little green slope, and had hardly time to take cognizance of its situation, before, dashing high over the precipice above, the snow, ice, and rock poured down upon it, swept like lightning over its surface, and then hurried down out of sight into the depths of the Trumletenthal, leaving the spot of green a patch of dingy brown. There could be no doubt but the sheep, whether few or many, were instantaneously overwhelmed. No living animal could be seen any where on the precipices; down which, by the regular channels, the snow and ice, disturbed and set in motion by the great avalanche, continued to thunder for several minutes after.

"It was about eight o'clock when I crept up into my resting-place, as the poor fellow and his two boys, who had preceded me, invited me to do, in Gottes name.' I found this to be the little loft close under the low roof, which was perfectly open at the gables. A little hay and straw, a piece of sacking round my body, and my knapsack for my pillow, made up the sum of my bed-furniture. I lay down just as I was; having first diminished the quantity of my mattress by stopping the interstices between the logs with hay, thanked God for the shelter over my head, and composed myself to rest." pp. 44-46.

Many a time our traveller's best and only company on the mountains was the goats, between whom and himself there seems to have existed a mutual attachment; and he moralizes upon them in the fashion following.

"I have good reason to conjecture that the goat has an exquisite sense of that species of honour and dignity, which is generally attached to elevated positions. One of the herd had found a kind of rocky protuberance in a small level plateau, and took formal possession. A second observed this, and, quitting the

troop, jumped up too. So there they stood with their eight feet close together upon the small flat surface afforded by the rocky pedestal. This, however, soon became the object of envy to the rest, and by a simultaneous movement the whole herd moved forward to the attack. A scene ensued which defies my powers of description. Of course it may be inferred, that, when the two first occupants were ousted and dethroned, the war raged with ten-fold violence for the honour of the succession-in short, they made such a clamour and scuffle, that the goat-herd came out with a great piece of bread in his mouth, and a stick in his hand, and drove them away from the stone of contention.

66

My own person then became an object of curiosity; for not many minutes had elapsed before I was alarmed to see the whole herd coming at pas de charge

up the sloping bed of granite, which led to my position. However, as they approached, they affected some respect or timidity, and, after eyeing me for some time, the greater part began to browze, or to seat themselves in the immediate vicinity; while some of the younger and more inquisitive followed the dictates of female curiosity, by entering into a scrutiny of my accoutrements.

"First, my feet, which hung over the edge of the fragment of turf-covered rock, became the objects of speculation. Then three jumped up behind me, and I could perceive were very busily employed at the back of my hat, and with my coat skirts. After a minute or so, I began to think it possible that, if I did not give an eye to their operations, they might perhaps browse the rim of the former, or one of the latter, and therefore turned round. They meant no harm, poor things; all they wanted was to amuse themselves, and I am sure they made me forget how many leagues I had come, and how many more I had still to go, by the harmless entertainment they afforded me.

"I made many observations upon their habits while lying in this pastoral state, but as they were probably more novel to me than they would be to my reader, I will finish the subject with only one remark that I could not but admire how

exactly they were constructed with my own species in this respect, that each fancied her neighbour's position and place of repose preferable to her own, and left no means untried to get possession of it; though the attempts were not always successful." pp. 65–67.

Mr. Latrobe, like all other travellers, remarks upon the vice, ignorance, filth, and squalid poverty, which distinguish the Roman Catholic cantons from the Protestant, as much as an Irish mud-cabin is

distinguished from an English cottage. Take a specimen.

I

"Uri is the poorest of the four Catholic cantons bordering the lake, and, as might be expected, the evil produced by the tenets and government of the Church of Rome is more evident and less concealed than in the others. The eye meets every where with a fat thriving priesthood, and a miserable ragged population. certainly do not mistake in stating that three-fourths of the individuals met with in one day's ramble of eight or nine leagues in this valley, were beggars. This practice prevails, from the old silver-headed man and woman, to the child who can scarcely walk or hold forth a hollow hand.

"The cottages and their inhabitants seem equally poverty struck, and inconceivably dirty and miserable; yet the

apology of the child that he meant nothing irreverent, since the leaves and cover of the book, or the stone and mortar of the building, have no real connexion with any thing divine or spiritual. I avail myself of this principle, continues the Catholic, to strengthen devotion where it exists, and to create it where it is deficient, by means of visible emblems and powerful mental associations. Now, without resorting to higher argument, we might be content to take the Catholic apologist on his own ground; for this very argument shews the danger of setting up associations which, from the natural feelings of the human mind, are liable and likely, on the one hand, to degenerate into popular superstition, and, on the other, to generate scepticism and hypocrisy. The man who packed up the Virgin Mary's image perhaps laughed at the crowds who adored it; viewing them much as a master of ordinary puppets does the groups of children who gape around as he pulls the wires; they thinking only of the wonder and he of the money. Nor, probably, does the matter stop here; for as the priest or the sacristan stows away the trappings, it is well if he do not whisper to himself a doubt of the whole dispensation to which they are injuriously attached, and reject Christianity in unveiling Romanism; while the crowd of unthinking worshippers are likely enough to be content with the external shew of devotion, and to make as little scrutiny into their own hearts as into the claims of their wooden images. It is, were it no worse, an irrational mechanism in religion; for while true devotion requires such an abstraction of the thoughts as is difficult even to the most spiritually minded man, these visible symbols draw them down to the grossest materiality.

If no

reverence is attached to the symbol, what is its use? If attached, an opening is made for the most degrading superstition, nay, idolatry; as is the case among the unthinking

of all Roman Catholic countries; while the thinking are led to view the whole as priest-craft, and to reject religion in rejecting imposture. We cannot acquit the more enlightened of the Papal priesthood, whatever may be their own ideas, of mischievously encouraging popular delusion; nor can we reconcile it with either fairness or good sense that they can read what is said of image adoration, either in the Inspired Writings or their own cherished Apocrypha, and not at once admit that their practice is both irrational and unscriptural. We may add also, that, even upon their own principles, it in the end does greater harm than good; for the more the objects of veneration are multiplied, the less share does each receive: so that the worship of God virtually degenerates into the worship of the Virgin Mary; and she is obliged to share her honours with other saints; and they in their turn, and the Virgin, and the Supreme Himself, yield to the local guardian of the village, or some particular object of religious favouritism. And with regard to the priesthood, if, even under the purest system of religion, familiarity with the external ministrations of religion, unless sanctified by personal piety, is apt to lead to indifference, perhaps contempt, from the sacristan of Alpnach, to an irreligious English parish-clerk, who views prayers and preaching and sacraments only as a trade; how dangerous is a system which makes mummery a part of its essence. The Protestant pastor sees in the relics of the eucharistic symbols only so much bread and wine; the reverential feelings with which he had just partaken of a portion of these sacramental elements had no connexion with the elements themselves: but under the doctrine of transubstantiation the case is substantially altered: the priest has juggled the wondering worshippers with a fictitious divinity; while, perhaps, as soon as the spectacle is over, he deposits his god in a chest with as little awe as the Alpnach functionary his Virgin

Mary; and thus is laid a foundation for that spirit of infidelity which exists among the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and extends widely to the more educated classes of the people.

We shall copy another of our author's sketches of Papal worship, He is speaking of the devotions performed at the chapel of the Madonna del Monte, a sanctuary on the summit of the last eminence on the Alps, towards the plains of Lombardy.

"Around me were groups of pilgrims, and the village girls tempting them to the purchase of their votive garlands of everlasting flowers, wax-tapers, and rosaries. Shortly after, I myself stood beneath the entrance of the holy place; dedicated, not to the Lord of lords, and King of kings; not to the meek and lowly Saviour of the world, through whose mediation and bitter sufferings in human form, we alone hope for reconciliation with an offended God, and for a passage through the gate of heaven ;-but to the Virgin.

"For this I had been prepared by the representation contained in the last and highest temple, viz. that of the Ascension of the holy Virgin Mary; a subject which seems to have called forth a greater display of talent and enthusiasm, than any scene of the life and sufferings of our Saviour. This is her sanctuary: here the lamp and the taper are always burning, day and night, before her altar; and the prayers and vows of the pilgrim rising continually before the shrine, from whence she is believed to listen and save.'

"The poor pilgrims, as they enter, exclaim: Santa Maria! Sancta Dei Genetrix, ora pro nobis! miserere nobis!-and when sunk upon the pavement in deep devotion, the same prayer may be seen in the mute motion of their lips.-Devotion! yes, and a devotion apparently so deep, so unfeigned, so humble ;-that, while standing by, the tears have rushed into my eyes, and I have humbled myself, and prayed too; not to the Virgin, whom I would honour, but cannot worship; not to the saints, the martyrs, the cloud of witnesses for whose bright examples I bless God, as so many testimonies to the Christian faith I have learned to profess; not to the departed Just in whose song of praise I hope once to join, but who can never be the propitiation for my sins:but to God the Judge of all, whose mercy and compassion are held out even to me through Jesus Christ.

We will relieve these painful scenes by a sketch of a Swiss village pastor, such, we would hope, as Swiss pastors were in the days of a pure faith, before philosophy, falsely so called, spoiled so many of them, and caused them to swerve from the simplicity that is in Christ.

"I descended to the valley of Gstaad, upon the river Saanen, a few miles above the bourg of Gessenay, and then turning to the southward, followed a footway leading directly up to the foot of the higher Alps, through the Gsteigthal, and arrived at Gsteig, a small village situated close under the lofty and precipitous Mittaghorn, and near the foot of the Sanetsch Pass, the most westerly of the passes over the Berne Alps to the Vallais.".....

"I was happy to have it in my power to vary and to render my evening here more entertaining and instructive by a visit to the clergyman of the village, to whom I had an introductory note.

"The pastor of an Oberland village, is, as may be supposed, in general the only man of liberal education and pursuits in the parish. His situation, as to the advantages of occasional society, are of course very unequal, according to the particular position of his cure. A few leagues may make all the difference between a post, where, to a smiling and delightful country, the vicinity of other parishes, and an open and uninterrupted communication with the capital, may leave but little necessity for self-denial; and others where there must be a superior and powerful stimulus for its exertion. Many of the latter, situated in the higher and more remote vallies of the Alps, under the shadow of the mountains forming the central chain, where, according to the saying of the country, the inhabitants enjoy nine months' winter and three months' cold sun (sonneskälte), are, by the accumulation of the snows in winter, often cut off from all facility of communication with the world below, for many weeks together. There the good pastor may remain for months, buried as it were with his flock; watching by day the red sunbeams shifting from peak to peak, from one white and sparkling mass, high above his head, to another, while the snows around his dwelling are never enlivened by them; and hearing by night the wintry tempest howling among the precipices and ragged pine forests; while, hour by hour, the snow settles deeper and deeper on his roof, and ever and anon the crash of the falling rock, or the thunder of the distant avalanche swells