Yet, when one dives in and reads them, nothing is more hospitable for the mind at certain hours than these stem spirits. They have all at once a lofty gentleness, as unexpected as the rest. They say to you, "Come in!" They receive you at home with a fraternity of archangels. They are affectionate, sad, melancholy, consoling. You are suddenly at your ease. You feel yourself loved by them; you almost imagine yourself personally known to them. Their sternness and their pride cover a profound sympathy. If granite had a heart, how deep would its goodness be! Well, genius is granite with goodness. Extreme power possesses great love. They join you in your prayers. They know well, those men, that God exists. Apply your ear to these giants, you will hear them palpitate. Do you want to believe, to love, to weep, to strike your breast, to fall on your knees, to raise your hands to heaven with confidence and serenity, listen to these poets. They will aid you to rise toward the healthy and fruitful sorrow; they will make you feel the celestial use of emotion. Oh, goodness of the strong! Their emotion, which, if they will, can be an earthquake, is at moments so cordial and so gentle that it seems like the rocking of a cradle. They have just given birth within you to something of which they take care. There is maternity in genius. Take a step, advance farther,--a new surprise awaits you: they are graceful. As for their grace, it is light itself. The high mountains have on their sides all climates, and the great poets all styles. It is sufficient to change the zone. Go up, it is the tempest; descend, the flowers are there. The inner fire accommodates itself to the winter without; the glacier has no objection to be the crater, and the lava never looks more beautiful than when it rashes out through the snow. A sudden blaze of flame is not strange on a polar summit. This contact of the extremes is a law in Nature, in which the unforeseen wonders of the sublime burst forth at every moment. A mountain, a genius,--both are austere majesty. These masses evolve a sort of religious intimidation. Dante is not less perpendicular than Etna. The depths of Shakespeare equal the gulfs of Chimborazo. The peaks of poets are not less cloudy than the summits of mountains. Thunders are rolling there, and at the same time, in the valleys, in the passes, in the sheltered spots, in places between escarpments, are streams, birds, nests, boughs, enchantments, wonderful floræ. Above the frightful arch of the Aveyron, in the middle of the frozen sea, there is that paradise called The Garden. Have you seen it? What an episode! A hot sun, a shade tepid and fresh, a vague exudation of perfumes on the grass-plots, an indescribable month of May perpetually reigning among precipices,--nothing is more tender and more exquisite. Such are poets: such are the Alps. These huge old gloomy mountains are marvellous growers of roses and violets; they avail themselves of