1861 ]

THE OLD WEISSTHOR.

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rarely seen a spot in which I should so like todream away a day. Before I entered it, Monte Rosa was still in shadow, hut on my emergenceI noticed that her precipices were all aglow. Thepurple colouring of the mountains observed onlooking down the valley was indescribable ; out ofItaly I have never seen anything like it. Oxygenand nitrogen could not produce the effect; someeffluence from the earth, some foreign constituentof the atmosphere, developed in those deep valleysby the southern sun, must sift the solar beams,weaken the rays of medium refrangibility, andblend the red and violet of the spectrum to thatincomparable hue. The air indeed is filled withfloating matters which vary from day to day, andit is mainly to such extraneous substances that thechromatic splendours of our atmosphere are to beascribed. The air south of the Alps is in this respectdifferent from that on the north, hut a modicumeven of arsenic might be respired with satisfaction,if warmed by the bloom which suffused the air ofItaly this glorious dawn.

The ancient moraines of the Macugnaga glacierrank among the finest that I have seen ; long, highridges tapering from base to edge, hoary with age,hut beautified by the shrubs and blossoms of to-day. We crossed the ice and them. At the foot ofthe old Weissthor lay couched a small glacier, which