and exhausted. All the occurrences of the preceding day had passed away from her mind as though they had been the mere illusions of her fancy. She rose melancholy and abstracted, and as she dressed herself was heard to sing one of her plaintive ballads. When she entered the parlour her eyes were swollen with weeping She heard Eugene's voice without and started. She passed her hand across her forehead, and stood musing like one endeavouring to recall a dream. Eugene entered the room, and advanced towards her; she looked at him with an eager, searching look, murmured some indistinct words, and, before he could reach her, sank upon the floor. She relapsed into a wild and unsettled state of mind; but now that the first shock was over, the physician ordered that Engene should keep constantly in her sight. Sometimes she did not know him; at other times she would talk to him as if he were going to sea, and would implore him not to She remained in this state for hours, part from her in anger; and when he hardly seeming to breath, and appawas not present, she would speak of rently sinking mto the sleep or death, him as if buried in the ocean, and Her chamber was profoundly stil would sit, with clasped hands, looking The attendants moved about it with upon the ground, the picture of des-noiseless tread; every thing was compair. 2 500 99sliv municated by signs and whispers. As the agitation of her feelings Her lover sat by her side, watching aggia" subsided, and her frame recovered her with painful anxiety, and fearing from the shock which it had received, that every breath that stole from her she became more placid and coherent. pale lips would be her last Eugene kept almost continually near At length she heaved a deep sigh her. He formed the real object round and from some convulsive motions, which her scattered ideas once more appeared to be troubled in her sleepgathered, and which linked them once Her agitation increased, accompanied more with the realities of life. But by an indistinct ct moaning. One of her changeful disorder now appeared her companions, Omenbering the Swenomsa to take a new turn. She became physician's instructions, endeavoured languid and inert, and would sit for to lull her by singing, in a low voice, hours silent, and almost in a state of a tender air, which was was a particular lethargy. If roused from this stupor, it seemed as if her mind would make some attempts to follow up a train of favourite of Annette's. Probably some ditty of the kind; linked in her again, and looked upon them with an thoughts with sweet and sad remem-air of the sweetest acknowledgement. brances. "You are all so good to me," said The physician drew her father aside. "Your daughter's mind is restored," said he, "she is sensible that she has been deranged: she is growing conscious of the past, and conscious of the present, all that now remains is to keep her calm and quiet until her health be re-established, and then let As she sang, the agitation of An-she, faintly. nette subsided. A streak of faint colour came into her cheeks, her eyelids became swollen with rising tears, which trembled there for a moment, and then, stealing forth, coursed down her pallid cheek. When the song was finished, she opened her eyes and looked about her, as one awaking in a strange place. "Oh, Eugene! Eugene!" said she," it seems as if I have had a long and dismal dream: what has happend, and what has been the matter with me? The questions were embarrassing; and before they could be answered, the physician, who was in the next room, entered. She took him by the hand, looked up in his face, and made the same inquiry. He endeavoured to put her off with some evasive answer" no, no!" cried she, "I know I've been ill, and I have been dreaming strangely. I thought Eugene had left us, and that he had gone to sea, and that, and that he was drowned! But he has been to sea!" added she earnestly as recollection kept flashing upon her," "and he has been wrecked, and we were all so wretched and he came home again one bright morning, and ah!" said she, pressing her hand against her forehead with a sickly smile, "I see how it is; all has not been right here, I begin to recollect, but it is all past now,-Eugene is here! and his mother is happy, and we cd shall never never part again,-shall ylowe Eugene ?".. SL She sunk back in her chair exhausted; aw the tears streamed down her cheeks. -Her companions hovered round her, potoknowing what to make of this sudden dawn of reason. Her lover sobbed aloud. She opened her eyes her be married in God's name." "The wedding took place," continued the good priest, "but a short time since; they were here at the last fete during the honey-moon, and a handsomer and happier couple was not to be seen as they danced under yonder trees. The young man, his wife and mother, now live on a fine farm, at port l'Eveque; and that model of a ship which you see yonder, with white flowers wreathed round it, is Annette's offering to our Lady of Grace, for having listened to our prayers, and protected her lover in the hour of peril. THE CONVENT OF ST. The lives of the Monks of the celebrated Convent of St. Bernard are passed in spiritual and temporal activity; and the common reproaches of monkish ease and indulgence would be very ill applied to their little community. This is no place where "slumber abbots purple as their vines." The climate is so severe that none but young men can support its rigour; of the thirty or thirty five monks of the establishment, we found about fifteen resident; scarcely three of these were above the age of thirty. The superior, who is a venerable and dignified old man, was only there by accident: a 1 tion has been quite inacessible to the monks themselves, they have frequently dragged frozen persons over the shows to their masters, by whose timely care they have been restored to lifes A magnificent dog, from the St. Ber general chapter having been held the day before. He ordinarily resides at Martigny in the valley. Even the young men are frequently afficted with cramps, rheumatisms, and other disorders. The superintendance of the temporal affairs and duties of the es-nard, is preserved stuffed in the Mus tablishment finds ample employment for a large number. Their rents (now dreadfully diminished) are to be received--provisions laid in-wood fetched from the forests in the valley: twenty or thirty horses are generally employed in these labours. Strangers are to be lodged and provided according to their rank and appearance,-seven or eight thousand persons are computed to pass the St. Bernard in a year, the greater part of whom spend the night at the Convent; and above all, during seven or eight months of the year, several of the monks and servants of the establishment are employed in the humane and perilous office of exploring the most dangerous and difficult passages among the glaciers and snows in quest of distressed travellers. The celebrated dogs, which they use on these expeditions, are indeed noble animals. We saw two or three stalking about the Convent in temporary repose. They are large, strong and muscular, short-haired, and of a dull sandy colour, with black muzzles and thick heads, resembling both a Newfoundland dog and an English mastiff, with a character of great strength and sagacity. They carry, in their perambulations, a basket furnished with provisions and woolen clothes, which seasonable comforts have often been the means of saving the lives of half-frozen and famished sufferers. They have a quick scent, and are easily attracted to the spot where a human being lies. Their natural sagacity is improved by training; and they either lead their masters to the place, or, where its situa-divided in the middle by a heavy iron seum at Berne, who is said to have been the means of saving the lives of twenty eight individuals. Unhappily, these noble creatures suffer, like their masters, from the severity of their lives and labours. They are short-livedy and old age soon comes upon them! A dog of seven or eight years, the Superior informed us, is generally infirm and disabled. At the hour of supper we met all the monks in the refectory, and were presented to the Superior, an interesting man, thin in person, somewhat bowed in years, wearing the collar and cross of his dignity over the ordinary garb of the Convent, and whose manners and conversation had a grace and refinement which rendered his good sense and intel ligent remarks peculiarly interesting, as our visit happened unluckily on a Friday, we were not able to form a fairestimate of the Convent kitchen. Soups, omelettes, and other dishes of eggs and vegetables, formed the bill of fare, which to say the truth, was not of the most satisfactory kind to travellers who had rode ten long leagues on mules, and found themselves, at the end of their journey, in a climate of a most animating rarity. An agreeable wine from the vineyards of the Convent in the Vallais, called the St. Bernard wine, was a pleasant accompaniment to our lenten; and the conversation of the Superior and his brethren, agreeably enlivened our potations. About nine o'clock the Superior withdrew, and we presently retired to our chambers, situated in a vast gloomy corridor, running the whole length of the building, grille, and adorned with old dusty pictures of a long line of superiors, priors, protecting popes, and princely benefactors of the house. My bedroom was a spacious lofty chamber, with double casements, a wainscot hung closely with fresh pictures of mitred, croziered, and cassocked churchmen, frowning in all the stiff outlines of the sixteenth century; and a lofty bed of nearly the same date, with heavy red maroon hangings, and vallances, whose old-fashioned solidity I found extremely serviceable in fencing out the cold of the apartment. A few old Latin volumes of Theology were ranged on a shelf, and a fine modern telescope of Dollond's was placed on a stand, which appeared, from the inscription, to have been presented by an English general officer to the Convent. Nos chamber in the Castle of Otranto could possibly have been, in all respects, a more fitting scene for an encounter with a bleeding nun, or the shade of a departed prior. As I lay down, and drew the maroon curtains very close round the bed, I could not help thinking If ever I am to be gratified with a spectral visit, for which so many have sighed, this is certainly the time and place-seven thousand feet nearer heaven than my friends in England-many leagues from the abodes of man-under a roof which has weathered the alpine blast and the avalanche for three centuries grey friars and pale nuns, in effigy, all around me, and perhaps the troubled spirits of the poor beings who bleach on the rocks without sepulture, flitting about in the winds which moan against the casement. If I see no ghost here I am certainly ghost-proof. That I did see none, that I slept soundly, undisturbed by any ominous rattling of the casement, or rustling of the old pictures (which must infallibly have occurred to a German student, or a young lady well-read in Mrs. Radcliffe). I can only ascribe in part to bodily fatigue, and in part to that provoking scepticism which has hitherto marred all my efforts to see a ghost. I awoke early next morning, and went to mass in the chapel situated at one end of the long corridor. It is a neat handsome little building, with a decent organ-one of the monk's performed mass, and several others attended. Three Vallaisanne girls, dressed in the singular costume of the canton, attended the service, having come up to the Convent for a day to see a relation among the monks, and to gratify their curiosity as to this wonder of the neighbourhood. On one side of the chapel is placed a simple and elegant marble monument to the memory of General Dessaix—a singular place of repose for the ashes of a French republican General and the bosom friend of Napoleon-Dessaix fell at the battle of Marengo, at the head of the victorious army which he and Napoleon had just conducted over the St. Bernard. The army consisted of 50,000 men, with fifty-eight pieces of cannon. On commencing the ascent, every soldier was provided with a supply of biscuit for three days, and each man received a draught of wine on passing the Convent. At St. Pierre the cannon were dismounted and drawn on sledges; it being im possible to use horses, forty four men were employed in dragging each piece to the summit of the passage. Napoleon and his Staff passed one night at the Convent. The monks describ ed their sufferings during the constant passage of the armies as beyond all conception. For one year, a garrison of one hundred and eighty men was constantly stationed in the Convent; and sometimes not less than eight hundred men were crammed into the pendence, small taxes, paternal governcells and chambers for several days to- ment, and his consequence in the gether. Canton council. Certainly there canAlthough there is no kind or shade not be better or surer foundations for of picturesque charm, which an ex-patriotism than these and it would ploring traveller does not find in the be absurd to expect any people to for Alpine scenery, from the pretty simple get these excellent reasons for loving home view, full of peace, and love, and their country, and to doat upon it onrustic repose, to the wildest magni-ly for its barren rocks and frozen ♪ ficence of overpowering nature; and mountains; but the Swiss appear to: " its scenes are not merely to be visited love its comforts alone, and to have no and wondered at, but to be dwelt upon, soul for its beauties. You find percontemplated, and inhabited; yet it is sons who have passed their lives withsingular to see how either habit or in fifty miles of Mont Blanc, and haven phlegmatic temperament, or both, fre- never visited Chamounix; and half quently render the Swiss indifferent to the people of Berne have never taken b its charms, and indeed to those of the trouble to travel forty miles to see their country in general. They appear the Glaciers of Grindenwald and the to me to possess singularly little en- Jungfrau. The mal du pays, or homes thusiasm. You scarcely find one per- sickness, which affects a Swiss, in so rev son in twenty, among the cultivated markable a manner, when out of his own classes, who has explored much of country, appears little connected with his country, or who takes any warm any ardent recollections of its sublime interest in its curiosities and beauties. scenes. It is a yearning for the snug A German, from his dull sandy plains, secure comforts, the little, tranquil, and certainly an Englishman who primitive habits of life, so contrasted never saw a mountain higher than the with the bustle and turmoil of greater Brighton Downs, is far more alive to countries. It is not the wild moun... grandeur of scenery than these mountaineer sighing for his bleak but native taineers. I cannot think that habit and use make the difference. A Highlander has none of this phlegm: he loves his mountains and glens for their own beauties, as well as because they are the home of him and his ancestors: he is proud to shew his crags and lakes to strangers, and feels a poetical and enthusiastic attachment to every wild scene of his native land.I have seldom seen any of this glow and romance in an inhabitant of Switzerland. He is a good patriot, and attached to his canton and the confederacy but it is a staid phlegmatic, and calculating feeling, connected with no romantic love of its alps, and lakes, and mountain-circled valleys, but built upon the sober bases of home and its comforts his snug cottage, his inde rocks, but the sober thriving peasant, r w R Do not imagine that I wish to un 176 dervalue the sober patriotism of the Swiss-their history for five centuries,′) is its best eulogium. It is not the less constant or sincere for being like all their sentiments singularly reflected and unimpassioned. Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame, |