is the beautiful sentiment of Coleridge's hymn in the Vale of Chamouni; and its truth will be doubted by no man of refined sensibility or cultivated taste. In viewing the grand scenery of nature, the mind of the savage and the poet alike perceive the features of Deity; on the bright page of creation, in characters enstamped by his own mighty hand, they read his perfections and his attributes; the vast volume is spread out to every eye; he who will may read and be wise. And yet, delightful and instructive as the study of Nature's creations cannot fail to be, it is a strange thing that, by many, so little regard is betrayed for them. How often do we gaze upon the orb of day, as he goes down the western heavens in glory to his rest; how often do we look away to the far-off star, as it pursues in beauty its lonely pathway, distinct amid the myriads that surround it; how often do we glance abroad upon the splendours of earth, and then, from all this demonstration of Omnipotent goodness turn away with not _one_ pulsation of gratitude to the Creator of suns and stars; with not one aspiration of feeling, one acknowledgment of regard to {204} the Lord of the universe? Yet surely, whatever repinings may at times imbitter the unsanctified bosom in view of the moral, the intellectual, or social arrangements of existence, there should arise but one emotion, and that--_praise_ in view of _inanimate_ nature. Here is naught but power and goodness; now, as at the dawn of Creation's morning, "all is very good." But these are scenes upon which the eye has turned from earliest infancy; and to this cause alone may we attribute the fact, that though their grandeur may never weary or their glories pall upon the sense, yet our gaze upon them is often that of coldness and indifferent regard. Still their influence upon us, though inappreciable, is sure. If we look abroad upon the race of man, we cannot but admit the conviction that natural scenery, hardly less than climate, government, or religion, lays its impress upon human character. It is where Nature exhibits herself in her loftiest moods that her influence on man is most observable. 'Tis there we find the human mind most chainlessly free, and the attachments of patriotic feeling most tenacious and exalted. To what influence more than to that of the gigantic features of nature around him, amid which he first opened his eyes to the light, and with which from boyhood days he has been conversant, are we to attribute that indomitable hate to oppression, that enthusiastic passion for liberty, and that wild idolatry of country which characterizes the Swiss mountaineer? _He_ would be free as the geyer-eagle of his native cliffs, whose eyrie hangs in the clouds, whose eye brightens in {205} the sunlight, whose wild shriek rises on the tempest, and whose fierce brood is nurtured amid crags untrodden by the footstep of man. To _his_ ear the sweep of the terrible _lauwine_, the dash of the