mixed impression of admiration and terror, which tempts the spectator to believe, that he has been suddenly transported into a world forgotten by the great Author of nature. One of these glaciers, that of Triolet, is covered with the wrecks of another ice-mountain, which fell some years ago, and buried many huts, flocks, and shepherds beneath its ruins. THE MER DE GLACE. These glaciers have their foundation in the wonderful =Mer de Glace=, or =Sea of Ice=; shooting up from it their sharp peaks into the frozen air. “To get the best view of it as a whole,” says a modern Alpine tourist, “you cross the meadows in the vale of Chamouny, step over the furious Arve, and climb the mountain precipices to the hight of two thousand feet, by a rough, craggy path, sometimes winding amidst a wood of firs, and sometimes wandering over green grasses. At Montanvert you find yourself on the extremity of a plateau, so situated, that on one side you may look down into the dread frozen sea, and on the other, by a few steps, into the lovely green vale of Chamouny! What astonishing variety and contrast in the spectacle! Far beneath, a smiling and verdant valley, watered by the Arve, with hamlets, fields and gardens, the abode of life, sweet children and flowers; far above, savage and inaccessible crags of ice and granite, and a cataract of stiffened billows, stretching away beyond sight—the throne of death and winter. “From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, huge granite needles shoot into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the great hight of thirteen thousand feet, seven thousand above the point where you are standing. This is more than double the hight of Mount Washington in our country, and this amazing pinnacle of rock looks like the spire of an interminable colossal cathedral, with other pinnacles around it. No snow can cling to the summits of these jagged spires; the lightning does not splinter them; the tempests rave round them; and at their base, those eternal drifting ranges of snow are formed, that sweep down into the frozen sea, and feed the perpetual, immeasurable masses of the glacier. Meanwhile, the laughing verdure, sprinkled with flowers, plays upon the edges of the enormous masses of ice, so near, that you may almost touch the ice with one hand, and with the other pluck the violet. So, oftentimes, the ice and the verdure are mingled in our earthly pilgrimage; so, sometimes, in one and the same family, you may see the exquisite refinements and the coarse repugnancies of human nature. So, in the same house of God, on the same bench, may sit an angel and a murderer; a villain, like a glacier, and a man with a heart like a sweet running brook in the sunshine.