A chilly early rising with a walk to the beach before the day is aired, a tormentor in the shape of a rough sailor, or fat fisherwoman, to plunge you remorselessly beneath a horrid wave, whence you issue blinded, deafened, and stifled, and incomparably colder and crosser than you went in. Why not, when the day is at the hottest, step leisurely in like a water-nymph, bathe head and face, nestle gradually beneath the rippling waves, and dabble with their smooth resistance for twenty minutes at least, emerging with limbs pliant and strengthened? ❦ [Sidenote: Effect of Scenery on the Mind.] Surely the presence of sublimity and beauty must render the temperament of those who dwell in such solitudes poetical; and yet the mountain shepherd is only weather wise. Always simple, often stupid, he is scarcely superior in intelligence to his watch dogs, which are at the same time his coadjutors, his playfellows, and his protectors. It is strange, if--living here alone amid the snows, removed from the contagious vices of mankind, from the coarse sensuality, the brutality, the debasement too often found in the world, from the temptations, the struggles, the strife produced by want, envy, ambition, the love of gain; constantly familiar with the ever varying face of primitive nature, with her grandest and loveliest aspects--the mind be not elevated, and the soul pure. Hourly are sights beheld, seen only in these regions. The glaciers reflecting tints of every hue, gilded with sunshine, or glowing with rose light. The stars, no longer brilliant specks, but appearing as they are, globes of intense fire. The moon, seeming to shed with her white beams the coldness of the icy skies. The whistling, the howling of the blast, its subterranean muttering, the roar of the thunder, all prolonged by a hundred echoes. The lightning flashing upon a numerous crystal-like pinnacle, the shivered pines, the rent rocks, the sublimity of the tempest! Then the dread silence which succeeds. The fleecy snow no longer falls; all is entranced by the mighty spell of frost; all mute, all motionless. Spring returns; the sun regains his power; light fleecy clouds float in the heavens; soft, balmy rains descend: below, verdure, foliage, and flowers burst forth with almost the first gleam of sunshine: but ah! the torrents are unbound, the masses of snow tremble, they are loosened, they fall: the avalanche overwhelms the valley with destruction and desolation. ❦ _Inscription on a Sun Dial._ Mark well my shade, and seriously attend The silent lesson of a common friend. Since time and life speed hastily away, And no one can recall the former day, Improve each flitting hour before ’tis past, And know each fleeting hour may be thy last! ❦ [Sidenote: Law of Jury.] The English law of Jury is founded on the law of nature. Man is to be judged by his _Peers_, because by them only can he be loved. ❦ [Sidenote: Tradition.]