However they got there, people at all events are living in them, and the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes. Those beautiful little tame cattle, with their short horns, and long ears, and mouse-coloured skin, with all the agility of a goat, and all the gentleness of domesticity--you meet them feeding in places where your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw, calling after them in that high sing-song note, which forms the basis of what is called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful, the voice is sustained and yet varied--being varied, it can be sustained the longer--and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an English drawing-room--may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss peasant chanting across the mountain defiles--may I often again halt to listen to it! * * * * * But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me--though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too much of that. But no murmurs. We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad ocean--had we nothing else to boast of--can never feel deserted of nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours--the dim religious light of our vesper skies--I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime. THE SECOND PANDORA.