It is at all times a very difficult thing to convey vivid and, at the same time, accurate impressions of grand scenery by the use of words. When the person to whom the communication is made has seen objects that have a general similarity to those described, the task certainly becomes less difficult, for he who speaks or writes may illustrate his meaning by familiar comparisons; but who in America, that has never left America, can have a just idea of the scenery of this region? A Swiss would readily comprehend a description of vast masses of granite capped with eternal snow, for such objects are constantly before his eyes; but to those who have never looked upon such a magnificent spectacle, written accounts, when they come near their climax, fall as much short of the intention, as words are less substantial than things. With a full consciousness of this deficiency in my craft, I shall attempt to give you some notion of the two grandest aspects that the Alps, when seen from this place, assume; for it seems a species of poetical treason to write of Switzerland and be silent on what are certainly two of its most decided sublimities. One of these appearances is often alluded to, but I do not remember to have ever heard the other mentioned. The first is produced by the setting sun, whose rays of a cloudless evening, are the parents of hues and changes of a singularly lovely character. For many minutes the lustre of the glacier slowly retires, and is gradually succeeded by a tint of rose color, which, falling on so luminous a body, produces a sort of "roseate light;" the whole of the vast range becoming mellowed and subdued to indescribable softness. This appearance gradually increases in intensity, varying on different evenings, however, according to the state of the atmosphere. At the very moment, perhaps, when the eye is resting most eagerly on this extraordinary view, the light vanishes. No scenic change is more sudden than that which follows. All the forms remain unaltered, but so varied in hue, as to look like the ghosts of mountains. You see the same vast range of eternal snow, but you see it ghastly and spectral. You fancy that the spirits of the Alps are ranging themselves before you. Watching the peaks for a few minutes longer, the light slowly departs. The spectres, like the magnified images of the phantasmagoria, grow more and more faint, less and less material, until swallowed in the firmament. What renders all this more thrillingly exquisite is, the circumstance that these changes do not occur until after evening has fallen on the lower world, giving to the whole the air of nature sporting in the upper regions, with some of her spare and detached materials.