was an old centre for goat-whey cure, and the inns are delightfully old-fashioned of aspect; the whole appearance of the spot, indeed, is full of local character, whereas most other settlements on the Rigi are cosmopolitan and commonplace. The salvation of the place is its utter lack of view: you must scramble up steep grass slopes, towards the south, to the summit of the saddle, to enlarge your horizon in a few steps from a barrier of green hill-side to a prospect so vast that you seem suddenly to have before you all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof. I do not know, indeed, that the actual range of view is greater than that commanded in France from the top of the Puy-de Dôme-- "Si Dôme était sur Dôme On verra les portes de Rome"-- and certainly it is not so majestic as many more restricted views of particular groups of Alps, seen--as mountain views are almost always seen to best advantage--from the slopes, or from the summits, of lesser hills. But except from the marble roofs of Milan Cathedral there is perhaps no other generally recognized and easily accessible point of view from which it is possible, merely by turning the head, to command so long a line of crowding Alpine summits, extending from the Sentis, in the extreme east, to Pilatus in the west, for a distance of roughly one hundred and twenty miles-- "Hill peers o'er hill, and Alps o'er Alps arise." Yet here, when we stand on the crest in unaccustomed solitude in the first stirrings of the spring, when the giant hotels are still mostly shut and empty, and when the high-level railway between the Kaltbad and the Scheidegg is happily obscured beneath icicle and snowdrift, there is yet no intimate revelation of the true inward spirit of Alpine scenery: "The difficult air of the iced mountain's top, Where the birds dare not build nor insect's wing Flit o'er the herbless granite." The Land of Promise lies fair before us; but here, on the saddle of the Rigi, we still linger on the threshold, though the biting morning breeze come, pine-scented, through the forest, and though the musical cow-bells tinkle for ever on the "high mountain pastures, where day first appears." V