[Footnote M: Crosses commemorative of the deaths of travellers by the fall of snow and other accidents very common along this dreadful road.] [Footnote N: The houses in the more retired Swiss valleys are all built of wood.] [Footnote O: I had once given to these sketches the title of Picturesque; but the Alps are insulted in applying to them that term. Whoever, in attempting to describe their sublime features, should confine himself to the cold rules of painting would give his reader but a very imperfect idea of those emotions which they have the irresistible power of communicating to the most impassive imaginations. The fact is, that controuling influence, which distinguishes the Alps from all other scenery, is derived from images which disdain the pencil. Had I wished to make a picture of this scene I had thrown much less light into it. But I consulted nature and my feelings. The ideas excited by the stormy sunset I am here describing owed their sublimity to that deluge of light, or rather of fire, in which nature had wrapped the immense forms around me; any intrusion of shade, by destroying the unity of the impression, had necessarily diminished its grandeur.] [Footnote P: Pike is a word very commonly used in the north of England, to signify a high mountain of the conic form, as Langdale pike, etc.] [Footnote Q: For most of the images in the next sixteen verses I am indebted to M. Raymond's interesting observations annexed to his translation of Coxe's 'Tour in Switzerland'.] [Footnote R: The rays of the sun drying the rocks frequently produce on their surface a dust so subtile and slippery, that the wretched chamois-chasers are obliged to bleed themselves in the legs and feet in order to secure a footing.] [Footnote S: The people of this Canton are supposed to be of a more melancholy disposition than the other inhabitants of the Alps: this, if true, may proceed from their living more secluded.] [Footnote T: These summer hamlets are most probably (as I have seen observed by a critic in the 'Gentleman's Magazine') what Virgil alludes to in the expression "Castella in tumulis."] [Footnote U: Sugh, a Scotch word expressive of the sound of the wind through the trees.] [Footnote V: This wind, which announces the spring to the Swiss, is called in their language Foen; and is according to M. Raymond the Syroco of the Italians.] [Footnote W: This tradition of the golden age of the Alps, as M. Raymond observes, is highly interesting, interesting not less to the philosopher than to the poet. Here I cannot help remarking, that the superstitions of the Alps appear to be far from possessing that poetical character which so eminently distinguishes those of Scotland and the other mountainous northern countries. The Devil with his horns, etc., seems to be in their idea, the principal agent that brings about the sublime natural revolutions that take place daily before their eyes.]