extensively, and in such a country it has its advantages, where commerce and employment are necessarily very limited, and where rivalry and strife would lead to most unhappy results. This principle of paternal government extends to the cultivation of crops, the gathering of the vintages, and the manufacture of wines. In reference to the gathering of the grapes intended for wine, no man can "do as he likes with his own," if his will is not in accordance with the regulations of the Syndic, or magistrate of the place. Grapes may be gathered for the table, or for family use; but the wine crop can only be gathered on the days appointed for its collection; and on those days almost all the people turn out to pick the ripe fruit. The Federal Post Diligences are under the management of the Confederated States, or Cantons, and the Electric Telegraph is controlled by the same authority; hence the great privilege of being able to send a short message to any part of Switzerland to which telegraph wires extend, for half a franc. The telegraph is established over most of the tourist lines of travel. A wire, like that which connects Balmoral with London, for the special interest and advantage of Royalty and the Government, runs alongside of the road from Geneva to Chamouny, and from Lucerne to the summit of the Rigi; thus, for a trifling sum, enabling tourists to bespeak rooms in advance, or to ascertain if accommodation can be had.

A choice of routes is given; either by the Tête Noire or the Col de Balme. The latter is to be chosen if the traveller is proceeding from Martigny to Chamouny; while the former is infinitely to be preferred in the journey to Martigny from Chamouny. For particulars see Cook's Tourist programmes.

The Pass of the Tête Noire is twenty-three miles, and can be done easily with a mule in ten hours, which will allow

two hours for rest and refreshment. The first part of the journey is by carriage-road to Argentière by fine glacier scenery, then by a bridle-path to Valorcine, the chief village of the valley, where traces of avalanches may be seen.

The scenery now becomes wilder, grander, and more tenderly beautiful, as we ascend through a pierced rock, and arrive at the

Tête Noire (3917 ft.). This is the usual halting-place, and all that heart can wish (or appetite) may be obtained at the Hotel de la Tête-Noire.

While resting here and arranging the flowers, which in all probability have been picked on the road, it may be interesting to read an account of them from a well-known pen :—

"You cannot think how beautiful are these Alpine valleys. Our course, all the first morning after we left Chamouny, lay beside a broad, hearty, joyous mountain torrent, called, perhaps from the darkness of its waters, Eau Noire. Charming meadows skirted its banks. All the way along I could think of nothing but Bunyan's meadows beside the river of life, 'curiously adorned with lilies.' These were curiously adorned, broidered, and inwrought with flowers, many and brilliant as those in a western prairie. Were I to undertake to describe them, I might make an inventory as long as Homer's list of the ships. There was the Canterbury bell of our garden; the white meadow-sweet; the blue and white campanula; the tall, slender harebell, and a little, short, tufted variety of the same, which our guide tells me is called 'Les clochettes,' or the 'little bells,'-fairies might ring them, I thought. Then there are whole beds of the little blue forget-me-nots, and a white flower which much resembles it in form. I also noticed, hanging in the clefts of the rocks around Tête Noire, long golden tresses of the laburnum. It has seemed to me, when I have been travel

ling here, as if every flower I ever saw in a garden met me somewhere in rocks or meadows.

"There is a strange unsatisfying pleasure about flowers, which, like all earthly pleasure, is akin to pain. What can you do with them ?—you want to do something, but what? Take them all up, and carry them with you? You cannot do that. Get down and look at them? What keep a whole caravan waiting for, your observations! That will never do. Well, then, pick and carry them along with you. That is what, in despair of any better recourse, I did. My good old guide was infinite in patience, stopping at every new exclamation point of mine, plunging down rocks into the meadow land, climbing to the points of great rocks, and returning with his hands filled with flowers. It seemed almost sacrilegious to tear away such fanciful creations, that looked aş if they were votive offerings on an altar, or, more likely, living existences, whose only conscious life was a continued exhalation of joy and praise.

"These flowers seemed to me to be earth's raptures and aspirations-her better moments--her lucid intervals. Like everything else in our existence, they are mysterious.

"In what mood of mind were they conceived by the great Artist? Of what feelings of His are they the expressionspringing up out of the dust, in these gigantic wastes and desolate regions, where one would think the sense of His Omnipotence might overpower the soul? Born in the track of the glacier and the avalanche, they seem to say to us that this Almighty Being is very pitiful, and of tender compassion; that in His infinite soul there is an exquisite gentleness and love of the beautiful; and that, if we would be blessed, His will to bless is infinite.

“The greatest men have always thought much of flowers. Luther always kept a flower in a glass on his writing table;

and when he was waging his great public controversy with Eckius, he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakespeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley-he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Witness the Midsummer Night's Dream. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy, when he marshals the flowers, as in Lycidas and Comus."

Leaving the hotel, we enter the forest of Trient; and when we have passed the village of that name, we join the road from Chamouny over the Col de Balme; then we ascend again till we reach the summit of the Col de la Forclaz, where a view as different from any we have hitherto seen, and yet as perfect as a view can be, bursts upon the sight. It has been described a thousand times, but no description can convey an adequate idea of the scene. Here is one account, which is a good word-picture :

"At our feet, as if we were looking down at it out of a cloud, lay the whole beautiful valley of the Rhone. I did not know then that this was one of the things put down in the guide book that we were expected to admire, as I found afterwards it was; but nothing that I saw anywhere through the Alps impressed me as this did. It seemed to me more like the vision of the land that is very far off' than anything earthly. I can see it now just as distinctly as I saw it then; one of those flat Swiss valleys, green as a velvet carpet, studded with buildings and villages that look like dots in the distance, and embraced on all sides by magnificent mountains, of which those nearest in the prospect were distinctly made out, with their rocks, pine trees, and foliage. The next in the receding distance were fainter, and of a purplish green; the next of a vivid purple; the

next lilac; while far in the fading view the crystal summits and glaciers of the Oberland Alps rose like an exhalation.

"The afternoon sun was throwing its level beams in between these many-coloured ranges, and in one of them the ruins of an old Roman tower stood picturesquely prominent. The Simplon road could be seen dividing the valley like an arrow."

And now down, down, down, until we arrive at

MARTIGNY.

(Hotel Clerc.)

There is little to see at Martigny, and it is tame after the scenery we have lately left, but we must take a stroll to the

Bridge, which is one of the best specimens of Swiss covered wooden bridges. Martigny is, however, an important place, as it stands in the centre of a series of celebrated spots. From here the ascent of the

Great St. Bernard can be easily made in about ten hours (it is about twenty-five miles). The approach to St. Bernard suggested Longfellow's noble poem "Excelsior." We welcome another pen to describe the scenery here. "What a bewildering, what a sudden change! Nothing but savage, awful precipices of naked granite, snowy fields, and verdureless wastes! In every other place of the Alps we have looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its shining effulgence -ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert—not a leaf, not a blade of grass-over the deep drifts of snow. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could vanquish the sterner despotism of eternal winter."