And now the sky began to brighten towards dawn, with that deep and calm beauty which suggests the thought of adoration to the human mind. Helped by the contemplation of the brightening east, which seemed to lend lightness to our muscles, we cheerily breasted the steep slope up to the Grand Plateau. The snow here was deep, and each of our porters took the lead in turn. We paused upon the Grand Plateau and had breakfast; digging, while we halted, our feet deeply into the snow. Thence up to the corridor, by a totally different route from that pursued by Mr. Hirst and myself the year previously; the slope was steep, but it had not a precipice for its boundary. Deep steps were necessary for a time, but when we reached the summit our ascent became more gentle. The eastern sky continued to brighten, and by its illumination the Grand Plateau and its bounding heights were lovely beyond conception. The snow was of the purest white, and the glacier, as it pushed itself on all sides into the basin, was riven by fissures filled with a coerulean light, which deepened to inky gloom as the vision descended into them. The edges were overhung with fretted cornices, from which depended long clear icicles, tapering from their abutments like spears of crystal. The distant fissures, across which the vision ranged obliquely without descending into them, emitted that magical firmamental shimmer which, contrasted with the pure white of the snow, was inexpressibly lovely. Near to us also grand castles of ice reared themselves, some erect, some overturned, with clear cut sides, striped by the courses of the annual snows, while high above the _seracs_ of the plateau rose their still grander brothers of the Dome du Gouter. There was a nobility in this glacier scene which I think I have never seen surpassed;--a strength of nature, and yet a tenderness, which at once raised and purified the soul. The gush of the direct sunlight could add nothing to this heavenly beauty; indeed I thought its yellow beams a profanation as they crept down from the humps of the Dromedary, and invaded more and more the solemn purity of the realm below. [Sidenote: BALMAT IN DANGER. 1858.]