it improper to avow a passionate affection even for her own husband; capable as she was of it, education had convinced her that it would be immodest to profess this feeling; but nothing could teach her to take pleasure in speaking of anything else. CHAPTER V. Oswald, disliking all recollections of France, crossed it very hastily. Lucy evinced neither wish nor will of any kind, but left it for him to decide everything. They reached the base of the mountains that separate Dauphiny from Savoy, and ascended the Pas des Echelles on foot: this road is dug in the rocks; its entrance resembles a deep cavern; it is dark throughout, even in the brightest days of summer. As yet, they found no snow; but autumn, the season of decay, was herself fast fading. The road was covered with dead leaves, borne to this region on the gale, from the distant trees. Thus they saw the wreck of nature without beholding any promise of her revival. The sight of the mountains charmed Lord Nevil: while we live among plains, the earth seems only made to bear and nourish man; but in picturesque countries we see the impress of their Creator's power and genius; yet man is everywhere familiarized with nature: the roads he frames ascend the steep, or fathom the abyss; nothing is inaccessible to him, save the great mystery of his own being. In Morienne, the winter was more rigorously felt at every step: one might fancy one's self wending northward, in approaching Mont Cenis. Lucy, who had never travelled before, was alarmed at finding the ice render the horses' pace unsteady: she hid her fears, but reproached herself for having brought her little one with her: often doubting whether the resolve to do so had been purely moral, or whether the hope of growing dearer to Oswald, by constantly associating her image with that of their beloved child, had not deadened her to the risks Juliet would thus incur. Lucy was apt to perplex her mind with secret scruples of conscience; the more virtuous we are, the more this kind of fastidiousness increases: she had no resource, save in her long and silent prayers, which somewhat tranquillized her spirit. The landscape now took a more terrific character: the snow fell heavily on ground already covered with it. They seemed entering the Hell of Ice described by Dante. From the foot of the precipices to the mountain-tops, all varieties were concealed. The pines, now clothed in white, were mirrored in the winter like spectral trees. Oswald and Lucy gazed in silence; speech would have seemed presumptuous; nature was frozen into dumbness, and they were mute like her. Suddenly they perceived, on an immense extent of snow, a long file of darkly clad figures carrying a bier towards a church. These priests, the only living beings who broke this desert solitude, preserved their wonted pace. The thought of death lent it a gravity which not even the bleakness of the air tempted them to forget. Here