possible, for example, in a rough kind of way, to grasp the shape and dimension of such a much larger lake as Geneva from the vineyards in the neighbourhood of Aubonne. The most immediately mountainous in character, because no other big Swiss lake, as already intimated, extends itself so deeply into the heart of giant hills, or is bordered so immediately by steep and rugged mountains. Thus Lucerne gains in surprise and mystery what it loses in simple graciousness; is dramatic and startling where other lakes are tranquil and merely soothing; and is certainly, to sum up, the most splendid and magnificent lake in the Alps, if not the most dignified and beautiful. II Those who approach Lucerne directly by the railway fitly approach the most dramatic of lakes by the most dramatic of vestibules. For those who use their eyes, indeed, there are abundant distant hints of the coming splendour; the Alps are first visible, in tolerably clear weather, as we descend the long wall of Jura on to the Aar at Aarberg; and further on, beyond the peaty flats round the Mauensee, and as we quit the lake of Sempach, Pilatus and Rigi, like two tall sentinels-- "Mountains that like giants stand To sentinel enchanted land"-- come suddenly into view as the railway describes a giant curve, whilst between them, at greater distance, is glimpsed the enchanted land itself, made substantial in the Alps of Unterwalden. Such, too, or something similar, was the young Ruskin's first view of the distant Alps on the Sunday afternoon from the city promenade at Schaffhausen. "Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or dreamed--the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been more beautiful to us; not more awful, round heaven, the walls of sacred Death." Yet in spite of these reiterated hints, previsions, and premonitions, when we step finally from the noise, and bustle, and subdued light of the railway-station at Lucerne into the brilliant morning light of the river quays outside, the great vision that then breaks upon us for the first time in its entirety--levels of shining lake, and long, horizontal precipices of wooded Rigi, and beyond, in splendid background, white confusion of shattered Alps, "A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys, And snowy dells in a golden air"-- startles and almost shocks us with the same sense of unearthly wonder as when for the first time in childhood the green baize curtain rolls up suddenly, and we gaze, with child's eyes, straight into the green mysteries of fairyland. [Illustration: PILATUS ABOVE A SEA OF CLOUDS.]