Staunton spectator, and general advertiser. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 183?-1849, 1840-06-18
Miscellany.
A SPLENDID DESCRIPTION OF THE
ALPS.

From Fay's sketches in the n. York Mirror.
Much as we talk of nature, there are places
where we feel that our previous conceptions
have been dim and narrow. He who crosses
the Alps, will experience this sensation, min
gled with certainty, that thousands of pain
tiers and poets, and millions of others, live
and die without even suspecting the power of
scenery over the mind. One journey across
the Spulgen was to us, day memorable for
ever. Our recollections are of grandeur
gloomy vastness.-awful solitude,-eternal
sublimity. There were moments, durinp the
ascent, of a kind strange and new to me
Whoever seeks something new under the
sum- II he has dwelt on plain, let him as
cend reritn6Ac mountain, and he will find 1T.
Awe, amazement, gloom, wonder, and rap
tire, during which you cannot smile, combine
TO elevate you. The road winds up, and up:
mad stream, white with foam laundering ali
day by its side-amid slopes and cliffs, for
ests and wales 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 wat
erfals-sometime along giddy and yawning
gulfs-yet, still always up and up.-Then
the face ofthe earth changes, and grass fades
nearly away, and the naked, everlasting rocks
lift their gray backs through the soil. The
tempests OF six thousand years have beaten a.
galnst them. Now the road steals through
desert of endless stones, broken and scat
tered about-now long dark gallery, wet
and drlpplng----now at the brink of tremen-
dous preciPice, which ourimagination would
receive as the summit of any mountain but
anon, the toiling, painting, sweating horses
drag you around an angle of rock; and 10 !!
II;
mountains In the sky piles swell and pyra-
mids of snow and ice; and so near their awful
height as to startle you; the white line runs
yet higher and higher, and you believe not
that 1t is yourp path still so far above vou-and
yet 1t 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 gloomily over your path.
ana the white snow shines beneath YOU, and
the winter shakes violently the closed glasses
OF your carriage and as the road still mount
ing and bending up and up, turn your face
now to the right-now to the left-you catch.
lar below, such awful gleamings OF sublime
! scenery--such dim wild depths Of azure
such forms of cold blue lifted and built ND a.
round you in the eternal silence, and shroud.
ed In mist and storm, that your very soul is
hushed and chilled, and you feel as if death
| the king of tenors, had here fixed his home
and were spectre TO stand in your path, or to
lean and bccken to you from his car of rolinp
mist, you would behold him without starting.
for your imagination can scarcely be more eS.
CITED. A cataract, which on the plain, would
draw all Europe to il as fashionable resort
Is here no curiosity. It's lonely thunder swells
and dies away i'll the interminabe solitude
twenty times we thought ourselves at the
height OF this stupendous road, and vet its
zigzag course appeared ever mounting far be.
tore US up and up, till the cold grew extreme
and the darkness Of night overlooked us; and
we were completely lost and enveIoped in
heavy, wet clouds, rolling around as like a
mighty ocean.