The Northern star, and constitutionalist. [volume] (Warren, R.I.) 1834-1837, 1835-12-19
SPLENDID DESCRIPTION OF
THE ALPS.

places where we feel that our previous
conceptions have been dim and narrow.
He who crosses the Alps will experience
this sensation, mingled with certainty,
that thousand Of painters and poets, and
millions of others, live and die without G.
ven suspecting the power OF scenery over
the mind. Our journey across the Spoil
gen was, to US, day memorable forever.
Our recolections are Of grandeur-gloo-
my vastness soltude-eteral SUBJ
Unity. There were moments during the
ascent, Of kind strange and new to me.
Whoever seeks something new under
the SUM-" if he has dwelt in q plain let
him ascend veritable mountain and he
will find it. Awe, amazement, gloom,
wonder, and rupture, during which you
cannot smile, combine to elevate you
The road winds up-and up-a mad
stream, white with foam, laundering all
day by its sides-amid slopes and cliffs,
forests and vales-then plain and poor
hut, or ragged town and some beggars'
You pause and rest and then, again, up
and up-winding and turning-sometimes
by magnificent water falls-sometimes a,
long giddY and yawning gulfs--yet still
always up and up.
Then the face Of the earth changes |;
and the grass fades nearly away, and the
naked, everlasting rocks lifts their gray
backs through the soIl The tcmpests OF
six thousand years have beaten against
them. Now, the road steal through a
desert OF endless stone, broken scattered
about-now through long dark gallery,
wet and dripping-now at the bank OF q
tremendous precipice, which your imagi-
nation would receive as the summit Of
any mountain, but anon, the tolllng, pant
ing, sweating horses, drag you around a
mother angle ofrock, and 10 above you
overhang other cliffs and other mountains
in the sky piles, swells and pyramids of
snow and ice and so near their awful
heights as to startle you, the white line
runs yet higher and higher, and you be-
lieye not that it is your path still so far a.
bove you--apd yet it is.
The earth is now totally changed, and
the temperature and atmosphere, and
heavens are changed. You wrap your
heavy cloak around you in the biting
cold. Dark clouds are rolling heavily
over your path, and the white snow shines
beneath you, and the winter wind shakes
violently the closed glasses Of your car
riage and as the road, still mounting
and bending up, turns your face now to
the right-now to the left--you catch, iar
below, such awful gleamings Of sublime
scenerv-such dim, wild depths Of azure
such forms of cold blue, lifted and bull
up around you in the eternal silence, ant
shrouded in the mist and storm, that your
very soul is hushed and chilled, and you
feel as if death, the king Of terrors, had
here fixed his home and were spectre
to stand in your path, or to lean and beck.
on to YOU from his car Of rolling mist,
you would behold him without starting,
for your imagination can scarcely be
more excited. A cataract which, on the
plain, would draw all Europe to il as q
fashionable resort, is here no curiosity
Its lonely thunder swels and dies away
in its interminable solitude. Twenty
times we thought ourselves ut the heigh,
Of this stupenduous road ard yet its zig
gag course appeared over mounting be
fore us, and up and up, till the cold grew
extreme, and the darkness Of night over
looked US and we were completely lost
and enveloped In heavy, wet clouds, roll
ing around like mighty occan.- Fay
sketches IN the .NsO Yorh M.'ror.